Grace, Nevermore
by M. Margit W
Summary: The exploration of Harry Potter had Lily and James lived; had Harry had a younger sister; had the story been about a long-lost girl. OFC main character. Healthy mixture of actual HP characters and OCs. An attempt to save my favourite characters' lives and try to give them somewhat of a happy ending (though, not without some bumps in the road). Family, friendship, drama.
1. Prologue

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?

— John Keats, '_Ode to a Nightingale'_

Prologue

Had any of the Potters glanced out of their living room window, they might have noticed the lone magpie, flirting its chequered tail. Alas, they did not and instead continued on with their morning and day, unaware of the subtle warning that by the end of it, everything would change.

"What time are they arriving?" James asked, glancing distractedly at his wife as he focused on his firstborn, three-year old Harry who had not stopped running since he learned how to.

Harry had taken his first steps just two months short of his first birthday. It happened without warning or prompt, as his parents were sat on the couch, discussing his upcoming birthday party. The ten-month-old let go of the coffee table he had clutched and, with giggles escaping his toothless mouth, stumbled towards his mother's knees with his arms stretched. Any talk of Sirius Black's involvement in planning the party died, for both Potters were too busy gaping at Harry. Shortly thereafter, he took up speed and had not slowed. Nowadays, only one little person could force the energetic boy to still and calm down.

"Around seven. They'll take the car to Bathilda's and floo over," Lily replied, equally distracted.

Her attention was on the three month old girl in her arms, being fed. Harry had never taken to breastfeeding, so they had had him on formula; Grace on the other hand seemed glued to Lily's breast, having latched on and never let go. "That'll give us time to get ready, too."

"Brilliant," James mumbled, meaning it but also busy with making sure Harry didn't slip and bang his head on the coffee table. They couldn't afford any hospital or St. Mungo's visits — not only because an injured child was their worst nightmare, but because that nightmare was far too rational and realistic to have due to the threat of Death Eaters and bothersome prophecies. Which was why none of them had seen the outside in months. That particular evening, however, that was about to change. Hence why Mr. and Mrs. Evans, Lily's parents, were coming over to babysit.

"I just can't believe it," Lily sighed from her place on the couch, subconsciously cuddling Grace closer. "I can't believe Marlene's gone."

"I know, love. It's not right," James' voice thickened and he wrapped a protective arm around the giggling Harry and brought him onto his lap. "None of this is."

Lily wiped her cheek and kissed the top of Grace's head. Between the threat against their family, a newborn baby and the constant news of friends and allies injured or worst… keeping her emotions under wraps was impossible. Then again, she had never felt the need to hide them, especially not from her husband who was equally open with his. It was tiring, though, being in touch with overwhelming and extreme emotions every day. Ever since Dumbledore had sat James, her and the Longbottoms down to inform them of the prophecy, Lily had felt crippling anxiety and fear hanging over her like an unwelcome companion. She knew James did, too, and they often spent the wee hours of the morning calming each other down from anxiety attacks.

"I wish Remus could be there tonight," Lily said, watching as James picked Harry up and moved to sit beside her and Grace on the couch. Harry immediately began, gently as he had been instructed, to stroke his little sister's tiny head, albeit clumsily. "He and Marlene were so close."

"Sirius mentioned in his letter that the mission's almost over," James pointed out, watching his son and daughter interact. "According to Dumbledore, anyway."

"I don't like that he's alone out there with them," Lily frowned fiercely whilst moving Grace away from her breast so she could straighten her top. Grace had fallen asleep. "It's not safe."

"What is, nowadays," James sighed, giving her a sad smile. Lily leaned in and gave him a quick peck on the lips.

"Want to switch? My legs are asleep, I need to move. I'm thinking bathtime for Harry and nap time for Grace?"

"Bath!" Harry's eyes lit up like the fireworks he had been promised he would get to see later that week. He had been denied trick or treating, so through compromise, he had managed to trade himself a night on the roof where the Potters together with Moony (if he was back), Padfoot and Wormtail would watch the Guy Fawkes celebrations roll over Godric's Hollow. He could barely contain his excitement, whenever he was reminded of the plans.

"Deal," James agreed, setting Harry down on the floor as he gingerly reached to move Grace into his arms. With Grace being so attached to Lily so far, any chance at holding her James grabbed eagerly. "Be nice to mum, Harry, no tsunamis."

Harry just giggled, making a silly face with mischievous eyes before he took off towards the stairs in a hurry. Lily and James grinned at each other. Despite it all — the prophecy, the war, the isolation — they couldn't help but feel like the luckiest people in the world. As cliché as it may have sounded, they had each other. Which was more than enough for a lifetime of happiness.

At least, they had each other for another hour. For when James and Lily left Godric's Hollow to attend Marlene McKinnon's memorial service, they would unknowingly leave behind their little family to a fate already prophesied.

Whilst Albus Dumbledore eulogised the McKinnon's in a crowded Hog's Head, Mr. and Mrs. Evans were falling dead to the floor at the same time The Dark Lord ascended the stairs leading up to the nursery. As Lily wiped her eyes and James squeezed her hand as they mourned their lost friend, The Dark Lord forced the nursery's door open with a blast that woke the sleeping children. Joining their mother and father in tears, though at different ends of the country, Grace and Harry looked up at the menacing _creature_ smirking at them.

"To a family of heroes," Albus Dumbledore raised his glass. And as the mourners in the Hog's Head pub echoed the sentiment, The Dark Lord raised his wand towards the crying children.

"_Avada Kedavra_."


	2. Chapter 1

"When great trees fall,

rocks on distant hills shudder,

lions hunker down

in tall grasses,

and even elephants

lumber after safety."

— Maya Angelou, '_When Great Trees Fall'_

Chapter One: _The Aftermath of Loss_

The night Lord Voldemort disappeared every witch and wizard on the British Isles rejoiced. '_War is over, He is dead_', they all shouted over filled glasses and cheers. Euphoria swept across households thanks to the space that relief had made. No more hugs of tearful farewell every time anyone stepped out of the house, no more whispers or looking over shoulders. Peace had come and so had joy. Except for a small group of witches and wizards gathered around a bed situated in one of the rooms at St. Mungo's.

Present in that room full of suffocating sorrow were headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Albus Dumbledore, and Order members Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Alastor Moody and Minerva McGonagall. None of them had enough air in their lungs to speak, despite every single one of them burning to say anything — anything at all — that would ease the pain of Lily and James Potter. The pair were staring blankly at the sleeping child in the bed that was far too big for him. Despite being in the room, describing them as 'present' felt like an inaccuracy.

"He'll be alright?" Lily broke the silence first, her voice unsteady with fragility.

"The scar is the only thing left behind and it is not harming him. As of now, at least." Dumbledore said softly, his gaze heavy on Harry's forehead. "I dare not presume it won't bother him later on, but as of right now, Harry is safe and sound."

James Potter swallowed tightly, his eyes shiny and red rimmed. A look his wife was matching. Their sobbing had subsided after one of the healers had provided them with calming draughts. Now all they could do was numbly watch over their firstborn. Any relief of seeing Harry alive and breathing had become muted — all that had precedence in their hearts were a claustrophobic grief that constricted their airways and muddled their minds.

Mr. and Mrs. Evans' bodies were resting in the morgue of St. Mungo's. Lily had yet to process their deaths further than acknowledging that they were not there to comfort her. Petunia had been contacted by one of the staff at St. Mungo's, and the Dursleys were expected to come to London the following morning to view the bodies. The two muggles would not.

"I believe," Dumbledore said, voice quiet and gentle as he turned to Remus, Sirius, Alastor and Minerva. "I need a word with you all. Lily, James, do excuse us. We will all be right back."

Neither Potter acknowledged the departure. They did not care for the plans Dumbledore was drawing up with their old friends and colleagues. They did not care for Dumbledore requesting that Remus and Sirius stay by their sides, no matter what. They did not care for McGonagall being appointed to go to Privet Drive Number Four to speak with the Dursleys; nor did they care for Alastor Moody being told to deal with the reporters and informing the Order of the night's events.

The only person James and Lily devoted any and all care for was Grace. Grace Lily, their daughter, who was dead. Who they had spent merely 79 days with; 1896 hours; 6 825 600 seconds. Grace was dead, and neither knew how to live with that or even comprehend the meaning of it.

But they would try. Over the coming years, they would try.

Ever so slowly, they would move forwards, never forgetting or having their pain lessened so much as an iota. But forward they would go, watching Harry grow up, alone, but safe and alive. They would find moments to genuinely laugh, or smile, or feel joy. But it felt diluted, afterwards, if they thought about it. Their friends would notice but never comment on the way their eyes could shine, but never as much as they once had.

Little did anyone know, but one, that their loss was transient. For as the saying goes: _t__hings we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end. If not always in the ways we expect__._

* * *

Mae read it for the fifth time that day — which meant she had actually halved the quantity of readings, thank you very much. Ever since professor Pomona Sprout had arrived with the envelope (along with a whole other world), she had at minimum read her Hogwarts letter at least ten times throughout her waking hours. Today had been busy, however, and she had not had time to do so. Professor Sprout had taken her to Diagon Alley to purchase all the school equipment she needed for Hogwarts. It was difficult to find time for letter-reading when one was busy choosing wands, buying owls and picking out cauldrons.

"You do realize they'll absolutely hate you over there?"

Mae looked up to see Piers Johnson, one of the other children living at St. John's Orphanage. He was a mean little boy, with a rat-like face, greasy blonde hair and a knack for making people feel awful. He had been at St. John's almost as long as Mae — she was coming up on eleven years, whilst he had arrived four years later than she. This meant that Mae was one of his oldest, most favourable victims. Her being, first of all, a _girl_; second of all, rather smart and talented; and last but not at all the least, _weird_, meant she was on top of his list of people he wanted to make miserable. And he had.

Piers had been the one who coined the nickname "Crazy Mae", which was more in-use than her Christian name. He was also the one who seemed to enjoy Mae's strangeness the most, simply because it gave him more ammunition. Whenever her peculiarities would show — have her recently cut hair grow at alarming speed, have things move or break without touching them — Piers' blood would rush in his veins as he immediately set out to plan ways of making her feel even more strange and alienated. It was the only thing that made the boy feel good — making others feel bad.

So Piers had always enjoyed Mae's strangeness more than she had herself. That is, until professor Sprout came and explained that Mae's weird, inexplicable incidents were her literal ticket out of St. John's.

"I don't want you in my room, Piers," Mae said, her voice steady but heart beating faster than normal at the sight of him standing by the only escape her room provided. The small "bedrooms" of St. John's didn't have windows, only stone walls and a heavy, wooden door. "And you're not allowed to be here. It's after curfew."

"_It's after curfew_," he mimicked in a high-pitched, mocking tone. His blue eyes were shining with mean-spirited glee. "You're such a loser. What's that?"

Mae tried to hide any reaction to him catching the attention of the birdcage perched on her nightstand. Inside was a beautiful, snowy owl the size of a cricket ball. It being a baby owl, Mae had been able to pay half the price of him. His white feathers had earned him the name Edur — a Basque name meaning, naturally, 'snow'. Her frequent visits to the ancient but surprisingly well-stocked library of the orphanage meant she had the ability to spend time researching names, places and worlds much more thrilling than the ones around her.

"Go away," Mae demanded, immediately rising from her bed and putting herself in front of Edur. She did not consider herself at all a brave person — she could count on one hand the times she had actually stood up for herself — however she did have a bewildering but unwavering instinct to protect others. "You'll get in trouble when Sister Ruth comes."

"How'd you get that inside?" Piers demanded, not at all interested in her answer. "We're not allowed to have pets."

"I'm taking it to Scotland," she defended and saw Piers grimace.

Ever since news reached the other children at St. John's that Mae had been accepted to a boarding school up in Scotland, life at the orphanage had become decidedly harder. The mentality at St. John's did not leave room for people to take joy in others' good fortune. Everyone wanted out of there and if one of them actually got out, they would become the recipient of envious hatred. Mae, who would now be spending most of the year at a fancy boarding school in Scotland, was not popular amongst the orphans. Not that she ever had been, but the abuse had increased ever since professor Sprout's visit back in June.

"No, you aren't," Piers announced and stepped fully into the room. A determined grin on his face. "I'm going to be nice and make your luggage a bit lighter, aye? It's not easy, walking around with trunks and cages, Crazy Mae, I'm doing you a favour."

Now...

When Mae was seven years old and Piers was eight, Sister Ruth had taken them to a rare trip to the beach. At that beach, Mae had found a magpie nest of four, perfect eggs. To this day, she had nightmares of the crunching noise those eggs made when Piers stomped all over the nest, laughing at Mae's horrified expression.

"Let me have a look at it," Piers said, charging forward, looking ready to rain down his usual amount of evil on Mae. With the crunching noise echoing in her head, and the vision of Edur being held far too tightly in Piers' boney hands, she panicked.

And a panicked Mae usually meant she displayed her weirdness — a weirdness that had recently been explained to her as magic. Before Piers could push her aside and get to Edur, she let out a fierce and desperate '_No_!', raised her arms out as if to push Piers away, and watched as his eyes widened whilst he flew backwards, out the door and into the stone wall of the corridor. As she heard him groan and hit the floor with a loud 'thunk', her bedroom door flew shut.

For a moment, she simply stared, stunned, at her now closed door. Then another fresh wave of a different panic came over her — this one chilling her to her bones.

"_Underage witches and wizards are not allowed to perform magic outside of school," _professor Sprout had been sure to inform her. "_Although it has been quite a while since anyone has actually been expelled, expulsion is one of the punishments for underage magic."_

She had not even had the chance to _see _Hogwarts before she got herself expelled. All because of Piers.

Throwing herself onto her bed, burying herself under the thin sheet Sister Ruth called a blanket, Mae cried her heart out. Cried for the missed opportunity, cried for the awfulness that Piers was, for Edur who would now have to go back to the crowded pet store since there was no way Sister Ruth would allow him to stay when she wasn't even going to Hogwarts. In a split second, through an unintentional reaction, she had ruined her one chance at a decent life. On top of all that, she was sure to get a right spanking from Sister Ruth, for Piers would without a doubt run off to tell on Mae. He always did, even when there was nothing to tell on.

The sorrow wrapping itself around her racing heart was so heavy, so potent, that it tired her out.

"I'm so sorry, Edur," she had muttered into her pillow before falling asleep. The little owl had cooed happily, flying around his cage without a care in the world, oblivious to his miserable owner.

In her exhausted sleep, Mae dreamt of Scotland and angry adults shouting at her for using magic. Had Mae not assumed the worst so fast, and tired herself out, she would have noticed the lack of reaction to her reaction. No one came knocking down her door — nor Sister Ruth or the Wizard police — to yell at her. Nor had anyone — though, Mae did not know to worry about this — sent her a letter announcing her expulsion, or even just a warning.

Nothing had happened, except Mae had broken her own heart by jumping to conclusions. When she woke the next morning to the sound of Sister Ruth ringing the horrid morning bell, her eyes were stinging and her body sluggish. Despite the deep sleep, she felt even more drained of energy.

"Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen."

The sound of cutlery scraping against plates echoed in the dining hall. Cautious and mumbling conversations began to take place after a few minutes of silence. Everyone had learned that on bad days, Sister Ruth did not tolerate chatter. However, since there had been no hushing or reprimands, the orphans tried their luck.

At least someone was having a good day, Mae thought with gut-wrenching sadness. In fact and most ironically, she suspected it had everything to do with it being September 1st, the day she was supposed to leave for Scotland. Sister Mae had never liked Mae due to her freakishness (and due to the fact that Mae was a person, and Sister Ruth hated people), so being rid of the girl, finally, would apparently make for a good mood.

Mae swallowed thickly at the thought of having to explain to Sister Ruth — after all the rare exceptions the nun had reluctantly agreed to — that she would no longer be going to Scotland, but stay at St. John's. Above all, though, she was dreading the thought of having to have it explained to _her _that she was not going to Hogwarts. She wondered if professor Sprout would come and look at her with disapproving eyes and tell her that she was expelled, or if someone else, a wizard authority of some kind, would come and take her away to wizard prison. She didn't know which was worse, being expelled or facing prison. She didn't think she could handle both — she was just eleven years old!

"Miss Lind."

Interrupting her depressing thoughts was Sister Ruth who was standing directly behind her, looking down at her with her usual, bitter expression. The woman running St. John's was cold and unsympathetic, which apparently made her eligible for the position of taking care of vulnerable children without families. Mae had often wondered why Sister Ruth — who seemingly hated children — had gotten the job, when she had met many other nuns and priests who had seemed to genuinely enjoy their presence. Nevertheless, Mae considered her life to have far too many unjust aspects; she deemed it unnecessary to put much thought to any them. Otherwise she would go as crazy as her nickname would have her believed.

"Yes, Sister Ruth?"

"You know you have a schedule to follow today, why are you sitting here like a fool?" the question came out harsh and impatient. Just like the person asking it.

Mae stared down at her oatmeal, trying to gather courage to tell Sister Ruth about the unexpected change of plans.

"Sister Ruth, I-"

"That woman is waiting for you out in the hall. Get going at once, Miss Lind."

Mae's heart sunk. So professor Sprout had come in person. She would have prefered a letter, as a way to avoid seeing the look on the witch's face when the sentence was brought down upon her.

With a sigh, Mae stood from her seat and began walking down the rows of children eating their breakfast. Dirty looks and sneers were shot her way, which was the only reason she noticed the telling lack of a boy who surely would have given her the worst glare out of them all. Before she could stop herself, she looked back at Sister Ruth who was trailing behind her.

"Where's Piers?"

The answer came before she could slap her forehead with regret.

"Mr. Johnson's with nurse O'Reilly. He got himself a concussion last night, sneaking about after curfew."

In a maelstrom of bad luck, it was a small blessing that Sister Ruth seemed oblivious to Mae's part in Piers concussion. A not very big part of her felt horrible hearing he had gotten so badly injured, but she was too preoccupied with her own pending doom that she could not give him too much of her attention, or guilt.

"There. Goodbye, Miss Lind," Sister Ruth said abruptly, again breaking Mae out of her own head and into the present.

They had reached the entrance hall where professor Sprout stood with her hands intertwined, creating a V with her arms. Mae had stopped dead in her tracks, frozen at the sight of the person who was going to expel her. Or, well, Mae thought, she had expelled herself. Professor Sprout was just the messenger.

"Good morning, Miss Lind," the witch said in a cheerful tone that contrasted so greatly Mae's state of mind that it made her flinch.

"Good morning, professor Sprout," Mae said weakly. She could feel her eyes begin to sting.

"How are we faring? Are you all packed?" professor Sprout asked, walking up to the now bewildered Mae.

"Packed?" Mae repeated, the epitome of confusion.

"Yes, packed," now professor Sprout frowned. "You are aware of why I'm here, yes? Have you not had a chance to glance at the calender today?"

"But-" Mae watery eyes looked up at the professor with a heartbreakingly sorry look. It made the professor switch from looking confused to deeply concerned. "But what about the magic?"

"What about the magic? Dear, I don't understand what you're on about."

"I used magic last night," Mae confessed, her tone very much alike a Shakespearean tragedy. Woe is me, the world has ended. That sort of thing. "I used magic and now I'm expelled."

"You're expelled? How? When did this happen? How- Miss Lind," Pomona Sprout took a deep breath as if to steady herself, then gave Mae a piercing look. "Let's go to your room. I need you to tell me exactly what has happened."

So Mae did. Through sobs Mae led professor Sprout to her bedroom and recollected the entirety of the previous night's events. As well as telling professor Sprout about Piers' previous record of dealing with birds, which she felt important to explain so that she could shed light on why she had been so panicked about letting him near Edur.

When she finished, her shoulders sagged and her head hung low. Unruly black hair covered her tear-streaked, freckled cheeks from view. A more sorry state she was sure she had never been in before.

"Miss Lind," professor Sprout said in a quiet voice, after a few moments of silence. "Did you get a letter from the Ministry of Magic that explicitly expelled you from Hogwarts?"

"Erm," Mae raised her head and sniffled, looking around her room as if expecting to find exactly that. "Er, I- No?"

A stiff but bordering on kind smile touched professor Sprout's lips. "My dear girl, you're not expelled."

"Sorry?" Mae said, dumbfounded. "But- but the underage magic law, professor. You said that you're not allowed to perform magic when you're underage."

"Any underage Hogwarts student who performs magic outside of school can and will be punished for doing so. But you are not a Hogwarts student, Miss Lind. Yet. For about—" she looked at her wristwatch. "— seven more hours, you're not officially a Hogwarts student, so you can't be treated as one."

"I'm not expelled?"

"You can't be expelled from something you're not yet a part of," professor Sprout winked. "Now, if you are to use magic outside of school after tonight, then you will face consequences. So consider this little misunderstanding a lesson."

Mae nodded gingerly, speechless at the tables turning once more.

"Alright then. How about we wipe those cheeks and start getting ready? We're a little behind schedule, but not to worry, we'll just apparate rather than use the floo network."

"Apparate?" Mae asked, still a little dazed.

"Get your trunk and your owl ready, Miss Lind. And hope to Merlin you have a strong stomach."


	3. Chapter 2

"Our journey had advanced;

Our feet were almost come

To that odd fork in Being's road,

Eternity by term.

Our pace took sudden awe,

Our feet reluctant led.

Before were cities, but between,

The forest of the dead."

— Emily Dickinson, '_Our journey had advanced'_

Chapter Two: _Journey to the Truth_

Mae preferred Floo Powder to Apparating. Though a little unpleasant, flooing did not make her vomit, which apparating apparently did. Professor Sprout had patted her back firmly and mentioned something about it not being unusual for people being ill their first time. The reassurance did not make her feel less ill or less embarrassed, but it did make her feel less self-conscious.

"Here we are! King's Cross, with almost a quarter to spare!" Professor Sprout announced happily, stepping out of the shadows they had appeared in. "Come along, Miss Lind, you'll want to find a seat before all the good ones are taken."

Not at all ready to move, Mae forced herself to follow the short but surprisingly fast witch as she pushed through the crowd of people.

"Do you remember the platform number?"

"Yes, professor," Mae said, slightly out of breath. She was dragging the trunk, whilst Sprout held Edur's cage. "Nine and three quarters."

"And do you remember what I told you about the wall?"

"I'll have to run through it," she answered, though she sounded uncertain and more than a bit skeptical.

"Precisely! Look, there it is."

Mae tried to see through the crowd of people and caught a glimpse of a sign announcing platform nine. She gulped nervously as she realized that the wall she was supposed to run through was made up of bricks.

"Now, I've got to get to Hogwarts as well, but I won't be getting on the train with you, so here is where we part for now," professor Sprout said, coming to a stop just by the wall. "Have a safe trip and don't forget to change into your uniform before getting off."

"Yes, professor." Mae nodded, pale and nervous as her only magical connection prepared to leave her behind.

"I'll stay and watch you head inside," professor Sprout said and Mae nodded, immensely relieved at the promise. "Off you go, Miss Lind. Take care of this little fellow."

Professor Sprout handed back Edur. Her grip on his cage and her trunk was slippery due to sweaty palms. Putting hands on her shoulders, the professor firmly turned Mae around and gave a small, encouraging push forward.

"It's best if you do it at a bit of a run, and don't hesitate. Just head straight into it, Miss Lind."

Mae took a shallow intake of air and then, not wanting professor Sprout to think she was a coward, picked up speed and moved towards the wall. Just before impact, she closed her eyes tightly and held her breath. When she didn't crash into anything, she opened her eyes and was met by a completely different scenery; an entirely different train station even more packed than King's Cross itself.

"Mum, you're embarrassing me, stop it—"

"—won't believe what Susie B did this summer with-"

"OVER MY DEAD BODY, FRED WEASLEY! YOU ARE NOT TO GIVE YOUR BROTHER ANY-"

The onslaught of people and- and _things_ shocked her into just standing frozen to the spot, taking it all in. Paper planes were flying over heads with seemingly no intention of respecting gravity, loud cracks of what sounded like firecrackers could be heard, but were followed by sparkles or even tiny bats. Diagon Alley had been the first magical place she had seen, but it had not been filled with people openingly doing magic.

When someone bumped into her shoulder, Mae came out of her stupor and tried to gather herself. With legs that felt like jelly, she began making her way through the people saying goodbyes and headed towards the nearest open door of the train parked at the platform. She kept her head down, not wanting any eye contact with anyone hugging their family member goodbye. All the sentimentality around her was foreign and strange. She had not witnessed hugs or affection in a long time, since she spent most of her time at St. John's where everyone hated each other. Or, at least, her. There was no nurture or affection under Sister Ruth's roof, something Mae was acutely aware of, but not familiar with enough to miss or want for. Instead, any signs of it made her uncomfortable and had her neck damp with sweat.

"You promise you'll write? It doesn't have to be every week, but every other, okay?"

"Take care of each other, alright? I don't want any letters from Flitwick telling me about—"

Reaching the door, Mae began the difficult task of getting her luggage and herself aboard. She was successful, grateful that people were too caught up in each other to notice her struggle. However, she realized that the hard part was not over — the sight of a narrow corridor filled with students running about or greeting each other reminded her of a minefield. It made her anxious and aware that she would be forced to push through them to find a compartment. She had looked at her ticket enough times to know that there were not assigned seats, but she would have to randomly pick one. With half her attention on not pushing people, the other on making sure she didn't accidentally bang Edur's cage into the wall or a student, she barely had time to pay attention to finding an empty compartment.

But she did. Just as she was about to just throw herself inside the next compartment, she looked to her right and found an unoccupied one. The relief was so great, she found herself holding back tears. She was not usually a crier, but with the last twenty-four hours having taken her on a trip filled with stress, heartbreak and fear, she had a hard time keeping herself in check. Thankfully, no tears escaped her and she was emotionally stable enough to begin the ten minute fight of getting her trunk up on the shelf. Being short for an eleven-year old, she found herself having to stand on the seats in order to reach all the way up. When it finally rested above her, she was breathing heavily and slumped down by the window, resting her temple against the cool glass. It had rained all day, keeping the temperature chilly but humid.

Edur cooed inside his cage and she glanced at him. He was flapping his tiny wings, looking at her with intense but open eyes. He seemed cheerful, which made her smile. A smile that dropped into a startled gaping at the sound of someone clearing their throat.

"Is this seat taken?"

Her hazel eyes met amber eyes, looking into the face of a boy that looked like he was about as excited to be there as Sister Ruth would have been. He had short chestnut hair, and though naturally tan, he had a paleness about him like he had spent the entire summer indoors. One glance at his clothes indicated that he and Mae came from two completely different worlds. Shiny shoes, dress trousers, an expensive looking sweater hiding a crisp white shirt — he looked like he had come straight from another boarding school, the kind that bred prime ministers and diplomats.

Not trusting her voice not to embarrass her, Mae shook her head and held her breath as she watched the boy step inside, pulling a trunk after him. Trailing behind him, entering the compartment as well, was a black, short-haired cat with green eyes. It glanced at Mae and let out a single meow, as if to announce its presence. It didn't look very impressed with her, much like its owner.

Clutching her hands in her lap as if her life depended on it, Mae watched as the boy stopped and pulled his trunk in front of him. Still a bit worn from her own struggles with her own trunk, she realized what she was supposed to do and wanted to groan.

"Er, do you need help with-"

"_Wingardium Leviosa_," the boy muttered, pointing his wand at the trunk. A few seconds later, the trunk lifted on its own and took a place beside hers. Mae couldn't help but stare, her mouth forming a little 'o' as she regarded the young wizard.

"H-how did you do that?" She breathed out, the question slipping out of her before she could catch it.

The boy gave her a sideways glance, his eyes conveying the slightest hint of suspicion as he took the seat opposite her. He moved to rest his elbow on the window and palmed the side of his face, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but where he was.

"With my wand."

Mae recognized sarcasm from a mile away; she wasn't good at using it herself, but growing up with Sister Ruth and Piers made it impossible to escape it. It immediately made her clam up and lower her gaze, uncomfortable and apprehensive of her compartment companion.

They sat in a silence that Mae had no intention of breaking. She wasn't an outgoing person nor one for seeking interaction, preferring to avoid people altogether because of the lack of conflicts that loneliness came with. Years at St. John's made her weary and in want of avoiding other children — other people, really — and the boy seemed ready to prove her right in doing so.

"It's a levitation charm."

The statement came from out of nowhere, startling Mae into looking up from her lap. The boy was looking out of the window with a frown on his face, as if something was bothering him.

"I'm sorry?"

"What I did," he muttered. "It's a levitation charm, it makes things fly at command."

Mae looked at him with caution, unsure of how to respond.

"Do you know a lot of magic?" she decided to ask, not even her social anxiety enough to hinder her natural curiosity.

"Some."

Mae nodded slowly, glancing between him and the landscape zooming past them. She cleared her throat awkwardly.

"I don't know any," she confessed, without prompt. "But I'm looking forward to."

It seemed that she had finally become more interesting than looking out of the window, for the boy turned his head to regard her with an appraising look.

"I'm Mae," she offered hesitantly. "Mae Lind."

"Sebastian," he said simply. A couple of moments later, he shifted in his seat as if uncomfortable. "Are you a muggleborn?"

"Sorry?" she asked, not recognizing the term immediately.

"Nevermind," Sebastian quickly said, displaying for the first time since arriving something other than boredom. He looked embarrassed.

Mae looked away politely, not wanting to further his discomfort, but when she finally recognized the word, she couldn't help but turn her attention back to him, raising her eyebrows in a look of understanding. Between reading her letter and checking out the purchases from Diagon Alley, Mae had actually had time to look through some of the books briefly; one mentioning the term Sebastian had used.. She hadn't actually read an entire book (there hadn't been any time for that sort of commitment), just a couple of chapters here and there. After the whole-believing-she-had-gotten-expelled business — and exhausting herself into a depressed sleep — there hadn't been time for further reading.

"Oh! Er, right, muggleborn. Yes, I am." She said with a nod. "I only found out about magic when I got the letter."

"Really?" Sebastian, his eyebrows rising as well as he looked at her with mild surprise. "You didn't know?"

She shook her head with a self-deprecating smile. "It was a bit of a shock. I just thought I was weird."

"Weird?"

"You know, crazy," Mae shrugged, blushing slightly as the words tumbled out of her. "Magic wasn't real to me, but sometimes I could make things move or turn things into something they weren't. It made me think I was insane."

Sebastian looked genuinely fascinated, as if he could not believe what she was saying. Mae wasn't sure if she preferred the total lack of interest or the mild fascination in her — either way, the ice was broken and she was having her very first conversation with an actual peer. It was as thrilling as it was terrifying.

"You're not a muggleborn?" Mae asked, though she felt she knew the answer.

"No," Sebastian said, something flashing behind his eyes and hurried to add, "I'm not- I don't have a problem with muggleborns, though. Or muggles."

"Oh," Mae couldn't help but sound a bit surprised. Then she remembered professor Sprout mentioning something about blood. Half-bloods, pure-bloods, muggleborns. "Right. That's… that's nice."

Sebastian apparently found her words funny because he snorted, giving her a funny look of furrowed eyebrows and skepticism.

"Yeah, that's nice," he muttered, seemingly torn between being amused or bemused. "So you really don't know anything about magic?"

"I mean," Mae straightened in her seat and swallowed nervously. This wasn't a test, she reminded herself. They were just making conversation. There were no right or wrong answers. "I've looked through some of the books we were assigned, but I haven't had a chance to finish them."

"How did you react when you got the letter?" he asked, bringing one of his legs up against his chest, then leaning it towards the wall. Sebastian looked relaxed, confident. She envied him, for she felt nervous and awkward, still holding her hands tightly in her lap.

"Well, professor Sprout, the Herbology teacher at Hogwarts, actually gave me the letter and she explained the- the whole magic bit before I had a chance to read it. I reckon I would have thought it was a joke, if it weren't for professor Sprout."

"I can't imagine not knowing about magic," Sebastian said bluntly.

Mae gave him a one-armed shrug and a small smile. Despite not actively disliking this curious Sebastian as opposed to the standoff-ish one, she could not help but to shift in her seat and want to escape the compartment. She wasn't used to talking to people so casually.

"Do you think," she cleared her throat and took a shaky, deep breath. "Do you think I'll be very behind? I've tried to prepare as much as possible for the classes, and professor Sprout said I shouldn't worry, but… but you can obviously do spells, and I can barely understand magical terms."

She couldn't remember ever speaking so openly.

Sebastian seemed to truly ponder her question, alternating between looking out of the window and her. Finally, he raised his hand and scratched the back of his head as if uncomfortable. It was with some reluctance he spoke.

"You don't know as much as a pureblood or even half-blood would, but I don't think it'll matter that much. I know people who've grown up with magic their whole lives and they can barely tell their wand from a stick. It all depends on how good you are at learning."

"I like learning, I like school," Mae said quickly, a small, small flutter of hope in her stomach. "I-I got good grades at my old school."

"Old school?" Sebastian frowned. "You've gone to another school?"

"Erm, yes," she said, uncertain, not really understanding his confusion. "I mean, not another magical school, but you know, a m-muggle school. Primary school."

Sebastian looked genuinely baffled, but positively so. Only, Mae could tell he was trying not to. He struck her as a person who was very careful not to show too much interest or even reaction — a person who would be labeled a quintessentially 'cool' person. She hadn't met a lot of cool people; mostly just mean ones.

"We don't have that. The only school we attend is Hogwarts. Or the other magical schools, I suppose — Durmstrang, Beauxbaton. There's governesses, I guess, but almost no one but purebloods use that."

Mae found that to be utterly interesting and surprising, but didn't know how to articulate that.

"What classes do you take at a muggle school?" Sebastian asked and for the next hour, Mae was questioned about every aspect of her previous academic career, explaining maths, English, geography, social studies and history to Sebastian.

"Well, History of Magic and Arithmancy are pretty similar to your maths and history," Sebastian mused, taking another bite of a pumpkin pasty.

The Trolley lady had arrived and the two of them had bought a variety of sweets and snacks. Professor Sprout had converted some of Mae's muggle money to wizard currency during their visit to Diagon Alley. As she bit into a chocolate frog, she was grateful for the professor's foresight.

"I'm looking forward to History of Magic," Mae told him, feeling and looking more relaxed than she ever had in another person's company. "Since I don't know anything of the magical world, I can't wait to have it explained."

Sebastian looked at her as he chewed on his pasty, looking like he was thinking hard about something. Curious about his expression, she threw caution to the wind.

"What?"

"Did Sprout tell you about the wars?"

"Wars?" Mae could only think of the World Wars, but reckoned Sebastian was talking about something else.

"First wizarding war, with Grindelwald, and the second, with The Dark Lord?"

Mae shook her head and leaned forward, giving Sebastian her full, undivided attention as he began explaining, rather thoroughly, some of the recent history of the wizarding world. It was hard not to have a reaction to the use of "The Dark Lord" — it sounded ridiculously silly. Up until _He_ was explained to her.

"So," Mae said, trying to wrap her head around all the information Sebastian had thrown at her. "The headmaster of Hogwarts, Dumbledore, defeated Gellert Grindelwald in a duel, ending the first world war, and Harry Potter defeated The Dark Lord, ending the second?"

"Yeah, but," Sebastian waved his hand as if to get rid of something in front of him. "The Dark Lord is most likely not _dead _dead. My grandfather says he's weakened, biding his time until he's strong enough to return."

"But didn't they find his body? In the Potters' house?"

"Where magic is involved, you can't rely too much on physical things. His soul, his- I don't know- magic isn't dead."

"So he died, but he didn't die?" Mae asked, skeptically. "How come the Evanses and the Potters' daughter died, then? Couldn't they still be alive?"

"The Evanses were muggles, and the Potters' daughter was a baby. Voldemort was one of the most powerful wizards of all time, there's a difference."

"So there could be another war," Mae asked, not wanting to dwell on the unfairness of innocent people being dead, but an evil man somehow still living. "If he got strong again?"

"Probably," Sebastian shrugged. "He's still got supporters out there. The whole of Slytherin would probably not waste a second to kiss his robes if he returned."

"Slytherin?" Mae repeated, tensing. "Isn't that one of the houses?"

"Yeah," Sebastian replied easily, but paused when he saw the expression on Mae's face.

"But weren't- doesn't his supporters hate, er, muggles? And muggleborns?"

Sebastian's face fell and he looked decidedly uncomfortable.

"Yeah, they do," he finally said, fixing his gaze on Edur. He looked tense and angry. "It's because they're all purebloods and they think they're better. Voldemort himself was in Slytherin."

Mae worried her lip, trying to process the newly acquired information about the place and the people she was about to live alongside.

"Is it safe?" she asked after a while, looking Sebastian straight in the eyes. "At Hogwarts?"

"The safest. Dumbledore, like I said, is the only one The Dark lord feared. He has zero tolerance for blood prejudice. Besides, not all Slytherin are like that. And there's three other houses who aren't about all that."

Mae nodded, slightly pacified but not completely. Sebastian seemed to notice.

"Look, I'm sorry. I didn't think when I told you about Slytherin. But it's important that you know because if you didn't, you wouldn't know what to look out for."

"Yeah, I know, you don't have to apologize, Sebastian," Mae gave him a sincere but slightly shaken smile. "I'm glad you told me."

Sebastian opened his mouth to say something when the train gave a sharp tug, before it began to slow down. A jolt of nervous excitement shot through Mae. Then she remembered what professor Sprout had told her.

"Oh! We haven't changed," she blurted out, looking down at her regular clothes with panic.

Sebastian used his levitating charm once more, getting both of their trunks down, and they both hurried to a restroom to change before returning to their compartment and waiting for the train to come to a stop.

"I'm really nervous," Mae said for no reason at all.

"What house do you want to be sorted into?"

As she pondered the question, she realized that she didn't care what house she ended up in, as long as it wasn't Slytherin. A bonus would have been ending up in the same house as Sebastian, for it would have been a great relief to-

"Wait," she said, frowning at Sebastian. "You're a first year, right? Like me?"

"Yeah," he mimicked her frown and she let out a relieved sigh.

"I just realized I never asked," she elaborated, straightening her skirt. "I'm glad, it's nice to know at least one person."

They discussed the different houses, neither knowing which one they'd prefer, as they slowly arrived. Sebastian insisted on levitating Edur's cage, making the exiting of the train far easier than the boarding had been. Getting outside, it was packed with loud students who pushed each other and who didn't look where they were going. Normally, that would have caused Mae to break out into a cold sweat, but with Sebastian trailing alongside her, she felt unusually comfortable.

Realizing that she had made her very first friend — whether the feeling was mutual or not was not important — nearly knocked her off her feet. Sebastian the Not Muggleborn, who didn't like Chocolate Frogs, and had a cat named Dolus, was so far the only person she had spent a longer period of time simply talking with. Hanging out with. It was a disorienting thought, but one that made her smile to herself as she followed him to where everyone else were unloading their trunks.

"Firs' years! Firs' years, this way!" A voice bellowed, catching her attention immediately.

A large man (largest she had ever seen) with a bushy beard (bushiest she had ever seen) was waving people over to him. People sharing her height and nervous but excited expression flocked around the man, whilst the rest of the passenger of the Hogwarts Express moved in another direction.

"Alrigh', my name's Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds here at Hogwarts. I'm also the Care of Magical Creatures teacher, so in a coupla years we'll have some classes together," the man explained, grinning at them with a friendly expression. "But for now, you just need to follow me and we'll get yer all sorted in a minute."

Following Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Ground here at Hogwarts, people began talking to each other, discussing houses and the actual sorting act itself.

"Isn't it just a hat?" Mae asked Sebastian in a whisper, glancing at the boy who had loudly claimed that the sorting involved fighting a troll. She had read the first couple of chapters of "Hogwarts: a History" on the way back to the orphanage, and had come across a detailed description of the so called Sorting Hat.

"Yeah. He's just trying to trick the muggleborns," Sebastian rolled his eyes. "That's Eric McCormack."

"You know him?"

Sebastian looked away, once again scratching the back of his neck.

"He's my cousin."

Her eyes widened and she felt a million and one questions on her tongue wanting to get out. Instead, she swallowed them and simply nodded. Sebastian had looked uncomfortable enough for her to push aside her own curiosity in order to respect his obvious lack of wanting to discuss his family. In fact, Sebastian had been very scarce on discussing his family at all. He only ever mentioned a grandfather. In a way, she was grateful — him avoiding talking about his family made it possible for her to avoid talking about her lack of one. Bringing up her orphan-status always made for an awkward conversation. No one wanted to hear about how she had never known her parents; how she had been abandoned in a park in Bristol by said parents.

"C'mon, you lot, in you go. Four per boat."

Having been at the very back of the line, Sebastian and Mae ended up in a boat of their own. Mae thought Hagrid might have sat down with them, occupying the two empty seats, but as it happened, he boarded a boat of his own. He barely fit.

Neither of them spoke, simply looking around them as the boat moved forward (magically). When the castle came in to view, Mae had to hold in a dramatic gasp. A lot of others failed. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that Hagrid seemed pleased by the audible reactions to Hogwarts. He looked proud, as if he was showing off the apple of his eye. Less than ten minutes in his company and Mae had already decided she liked him. There was such an effortlessly genuine kindness to the man that she had never encountered before. It was as refreshing as it was foreign.

As they all got off their boats, Hagrid led them up a small hill that ended with them outside of a large door. With three loud and strong knocks, Hagrid banged his knuckles against it. It opened to reveal a tall, lean woman with glasses and a tight knot on the crown of her head. Her green, sharp, intelligent eyes swept over the crowd of nervous first years. Mae wondered if she imagined it for it was so miniscule, but the corner of the woman's mouth seemed to quirk upward.

"Welcome to Hogwarts."


	4. Chapter 3

"Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true."

— Alfred Tennyson, "Ring out, Wild Bells"

Chapter Three: Forward to the Truth

Professor McGonagall had — in the amount of time it took to scold half the group of first years for their lack of proper apparel ("It is the easiest of all necktie knots so I simply cannot accept your attempt.") — both instilled fear as well as respect in Mae. The professor was stern and not-to-be-trifled-with; much like Sister Ruth. Unlike the nun, however, Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall had a warmth behind her eyes that motivated her stern exterior. She was not blunt for lack of patience or for mean-spiritedness; the professor was simply seeking the very best for the students. Wanting them to be the greatest version of themselves.

All that went over Mae's head, as she stood on weak knees outside the Great Hall with the other first years. For the time being, professor McGonagall was just another authority figure Mae was afraid to disappoint or in some way anger. This meant that she tried to straighten her already straight skirt and fiddled with her already presentable tie, becoming sweaty with the anxiousness to be decent. Sebastian glanced at her but did not comment.

"I think I'm going to be ill," she mumbled under her breath, her confession only reaching Sebastian's ears. Intertwining her hands, Mae tried desperately to keep them from shaking.

"You're not going to be ill.".

He spoke with such conviction, she was keen to believe him. She didn't though, curtesy of the way her stomach twisted into painful knots.

Sebastian was indeed a curious person, with an amount of confidence unparalleled by anyone she had ever met. He acted unperturbed by his surroundings whilst simultaneously mindfully keeping a distance from them on purpose. Case in point: he had not broken away from her quiet and socially stunted side even though he had earned several looks from other students, as if he was recognised. A familiar face. Some even greeted him by name. He neither acknowledged the looks nor the greetings, keeping his gaze straight and blank.

There was a certain similarity that Mae thought she could read between them. He did nothing to interact with others and kept quiet, like her. The difference between them, though, was that Mae was anxious and afraid to, whilst Sebastian seemed simply unwilling.

"Sebastian," Mae whispered, nudging his arm with her elbow.

The corridor was echoing with buzzing conversations, yet she lowered her voice anyway to be kept from being overheard.

"What?"

"If we're sorted into the same house," she said, hesitating only a second before she continued. "Could we please sit together? You're the only other person I know here."

She was making herself vulnerable and open for ridicule but that was just her being herself, and she didn't know any other way to be. Deception, calculating strategy, manipulation — she had no idea how to use any of it. It was on Sebastian if he was going to throw it back in her face. She hoped he wouldn't, but knew enough of the world to be prepared for if he did.

"Yeah."

"Yeah?" She sounded equally relieved as she did startled.

"I doubt we'll be sorted into the same house, but if we are then, yeah."

Professor McGonagall gave the group one last, piercing look before she turned to the large door and pushed it open. Mae felt her heart try to escape her chest. On legs turning more and more jelly-like with every step, she moved along with her peers into the Great Hall. The room was full of robe-clad students and teachers, watching them walk in as if they were a spectacle. Mae sure felt like one. Over their heads lit candles were floating and the darkened sky was on display, somehow, showing hints of the stars and their constellations. It was overwhelmingly magical.

Stopping in front of the teachers' table — past the four House tables — the first years watched as professor McGonagall moved to stand beside a stool where a timeworn hat sat. Had Mae not been beside herself with nerves, she would have perhaps registered the song that the Hat broke into. Instead, the song was listened to but not heard; the words jumbling together as if the English language was being stolen from right out of her head, making all of it incomprehensible. Moreover, and Mae found this to be most paramount, the Hat — the actual Hat — was singing. That in and of itself was disorienting enough to wrap her already muddled head around.

A loud applause followed the hat's singing, and when it died, professor McGonagall cleared her throat.

"Let us now begin this year's Sorting."

Mae watched as first year after first year walked up to the stool and put the hat on, attempting to calm her breathing before she passed out. Unwelcome visions of the Hat not being able to sort her, or tripping as she walked up to it, caused her suffocating anxiety. Blood rushing in her ears was muffling the noises of the hall, making her feel an imaginary distance to her surroundings, whilst simultaneously feeling hyper aware of everything. All was hot and cold; up and down.

"It's almost your turn."

Mae turned sharply to look at Sebastian, startled by the reminder of his existence. His face lacked any readable emotion, though it had lost some of its colour from earlier. It neither comforted or worried her to know she wasn't alone in her nervosity. He gave her a brief glance before facing forward.

"Lind, right? They just started on the Ls. You should try to take a few deep breaths, or… something."

Momentarily distracted, Mae looked up to watch a blonde girl with long hair move towards the Hat. It made for a sort of back-to-reality kind of moment and she rolled her shoulders, willing herself to get her feet back on the ground. Her head was usually her safe space, but it could also be her worst enemy. Especially in pressured situations.

With a moment of hopefully not temporary clarity, Mae realized she didn't know Sebastian's last name. For someone she had talked with non-stop for four hours, not knowing his full name felt absurd. She could answer questions about his views on Herbology ('important, but as dull as the Pixie Wars'), wizarding media ('embarrassingly angled') and cats ('the superior animal'). But a surname?

"I don't know your last name, Sebastian."

She might as well have asked him to recite all of Pi, judging by the heaviness of the sigh he let out. It did not seem to come from an annoyed place but rather one of defeat, of reluctance. As she opened her mouth to blurt out a 'nevermind', Sebastian opened his to seemingly answer her, albeit reluctantly. Before either had a chance, professor McGonagall's voice cut through.

"Lind, Mae."

Oh, please, no. Her name being called had the same effect as if she had been struck by lightning. Her mind somehow both quieted down and flung into a loud chaos. Sebastian — saved by the Sorting Hat-shaped bell — had to physically push her into moving. Ascending the three steps that brought her to the stool, Mae kept her head down, her unruly hair falling into her face.

She had never had long hair, like the blonde girl before her. Sister Ruth made sure that the girls at St. John's kept their hair no longer than shoulder-length. The why of that, she wasn't sure of. Perhaps for hygienic reasons, or economical — the mind of Sister Ruth had always eluded her. It had never bothered her before, but now when she felt like everything was pushing in on her it felt like the absolute worst problem in her life to date. Had she had longer hair she may have braided it or put it in a ponytail, then it wouldn't have been in her eyes, in her face, closing in on her like the rest of the hall.

Mae carefully climbed the stool and sat with every muscle tense as the Sorting Hat was placed on her head. Darkness descended upon her without warning.

"Oh my."

Mae flinched.

"Oh, my. What fun, fun, fun." The faceless voice said, coming out hushed but delighted. "We've been looking for you, dear. That is, the ones who have known to look. Have you known?"

Mae's brain seemed to once again malfunction, not at all comprehending the words of the Hat. It made her restless and apprehensive as she wondered what she was supposed to do. Not knowing what was expected of her was a loss of control she did not enjoy. The hat wasn't supposed to ask questions or even talk that much at all, according to the book she read. It was just supposed to analyze the person and then sort into the appropriate house. No more, no less.

"No, you're still in the dark. Such a shame. Not being true makes you false, which makes you not you. Yet, anyhow. Anywhere I place you, matters not. I can't see you, because you can't see you. What a shame, such a shame. But oh, what fun."

She desperately hoped there would not be some sort of test on the Sorting experience. The Hat spewed nonsense she did not understand and spoke in riddles she could not begin to untangle. And she loved riddles.

"Am I not being placed anywhere?" she thought anxiously, gripping the stool so tightly it paled her knuckles.

"I have never neglected my duty, girl. You will not and cannot make a fool out of me."

"RAVENCLAW!"

The nonsense-babbling Hat was lifted off her head, the abruptness causing her to blink rapidly agains the contrasting brightness. The table the second farthest to the left had erupted into loud applause, apparently for her, and she dazedly acknowledged the noise as belonging to the Ravenclaws. Which she was now a part of. Oh, God.

Any profound analyzes on her being a Ravenclaw would have to be made later when she was clearheaded. At that moment in time, all she could focus on was the fact that she was not a Slytherin, nor had she taken a tumble. Yet. With that in mind, Mae made her way over to the Ravenclaw table going completely on auto-pilot, somehow finding an empty seat next to another girl — a girl who looked like a first year, and who was beaming brightly. As if she was having the time of her life.

"Thank Merlin, I thought I'd be stuck with only him."

Mae stared blankly the girl. Was that a greeting or a question? She wasn't yet calm enough for conversation, adrenaline still pumping through her veins.

"Everyone's ending up in Gryffindor or Slytherin, aren't they? Figures. War-babies and all that, am I right?"

Mae wondered if the girl was — right, that is. She had no idea. Her state of mind was making everything seem like rocket science.

"I'm Zaïf. Zaïf Kandemir," the girl introduced over the sound of applause. Despite Mae feeling like everything was moving in slow motion, apparently it wasn't, because two people had already been sorted since she sat down. Hufflepuff and Slytherin. "You're Mae Lind."

"I-I am," Mae nodded, wiping her sweaty palms on her lap. "It's, er, it's nice to meet you."

"I need you to become my friend," Zaïf informed her without preamble. Grabbing Mae's hand with both of hers, a hopeful expression overtook Zaïf Kandemir's dimpled face. "As far as I know I have no relations to any Linds, living or dead, and if I go through life another day without having any friends who aren't also related to me, I'll become my aunt Linda. And I can't become my aunt Linda, Mae. I can't. You have got to help me."

"Erm," Mae was so utterly and completely blindsided by the request, by the entire person that was Zaïf Kandemir, that she found herself nodding. "I- I suppose that's, er, alright, yes."

"Oh, brilliant!" Zaïf clapped her hands. "I've been going crazy, comparing myself to aunt Linda all summer. She never had a Mae Lind, though, but I do."

"Not for long," a voice to Zaïf's right said. A boy, also a first year it seemed, was giving Zaïf a look of total incredulity. "You're going to scare her away with your crazy talk, Z. Which is such a Linda thing to do, you know."

"Rai, I swear on my wand, I'm going to Bat-Bogey you into the next century if you don't shut it," Zaïf threatened, glaring at the boy. "You can't let me have this? You can't just butt out of my life for two seconds?"

"It's not my fault you're making a complete idiot of yourself right next to me. I feel obliged to help the less fortunate."

"How, by inviting yourself into my conversations, you absolute troll? The way you invited yourself into my house."

"I was sorted first!"

Zaïf Kandemir let out a dramatic huff, crossed her arms and turned back to face a wide-eyed Mae.

"Why am I doomed to a life surrounded by wretched people?" Zaïf bemoaned with closed eyes. She opened one to look at Mae. "Except you, Mae. You're not wretched."

"Thank you." It came out more like a question.

Movement to her left made Mae turn to see who had just sat down next to her. Her eyebrows rose to hide under her fringe as she stared into Sebastian's now familiar eyes once again.

"Oh! But- you're in Ravenclaw, too?"

"It's going to be hard getting things past you."

Heat crawled over her cheeks. Surprisingly, she felt more amused than embarrassed by his sarcasm, despite it being aimed at her. Had Piers or some other kid at the orphanage responded that way, she was sure she would have felt bad. It was quite nice to smile at the sarcasm, rather than frown.

"Oi! Ollivander!" The Rai fellow shouted from beside Zaïf, leaning over the table to grin at Sebastian. "Reunited again, eh? You miss me too much?"

"Now who sounds crazy?" Zaïf rolled her eyes before looking over at Sebastian. "Didn't peg you for a Ravenclaw, Sebastian. Thought you'd definitely follow daddy O, not Granddaddy O."

Mae looked between them, intrigued by the interactions but also a bit intimidated. It felt quite a bit like she had entered a class where everyone already knew each other and she was about to take on the role as the sore thumb.

"Zaïf. Rai." Sebastian replied, giving them flat looks to go with his less than enthusiastic greeting.

"You know my friend Mae, Seb?" Zaïf asked, putting an arm around Mae's shoulders. "We just met but she's already the best friend I've ever had, honest to Agrippa."

Another flat look, and this time Sebastian did not offer a verbal reply. Before the silence got too awkward, Mae cleared her throat and hurriedly stepped in.

"We sat together on the train," Mae provided, looking to Sebastian hesitantly.

His lack of response was clearly showing his aversion to Zaïf and Rai. Not necessarily in a hostile manner, Mae didn't think. There was a certain familiarity between the three of them that went right over her head. Her theory was only strengthened by the way the girl didn't seem the least bit offended by Sebastian's attitude. In fact, she was grinning.

"I looked for you for ages, mate," Rai said, his entire upper body now resting on the table. Older students were shooting him disapproving looks which made Mae blush by association. "You still owe me a game of Snaps."

"Didn't he annihilate you last time and clean out your entire allowance, little brother?" Zaïf wondered innocently, eyeing her nails.

"Which means he owes me a chance to win it back," Rai countered matter-of-factly. "What d'you say, Ollivander? A rematch after the feast? I promise not to cheat this time."

Mae turned to look at Sebastian, finding him extinguishing one of the lit candles in front of him with his index finger and thumb. Then, a moment later, he did the same motion but backwards and the candle was lit again.

"Merlin, you're embarrassing, Rai," Zaïf scoffed. "Leave Seb alone before he hexes you like he did Eric last summer. Or- in fact, please. Continue. Nothing would please me more than to spend my first night at Hogwarts, knowing you're rotting away in the hospital wing."

Rai slapped the back of his sister's head, to which Zaïf responded almost immediately by pushing his face away so he knocked into the older student beside him. Another round of glares were sent their way.

"Do we need to separate the two of you?" an older student, a boy with square glasses and a shiny badge on his robes, asked with a disapproving frown. Mae swallowed and watched the two siblings apprehensively. Her blood ran cold for them; confrontations with authority being one of her greatest fears.

"Oh, bugger off, Khalil," Rai muttered acidly.

Mae's jaw dropped.

"Yeah, mind your own business, Khalil!" Zaïf countered, crossing her arms moodily.

Had Zaïf not called Rai her little brother earlier, Mae would have figured that one out thanks to their synchronised sulks. They looked identical.

The one called Khalil, receiver of dirty looks from the Kandemirs, rolled his eyes and looked towards the enchanted ceiling, muttering, "Merlin help us all."

Who was Khalil? How did they all know each other? Would Zaïf and Rai get in trouble for talking back to him later? Mae had so many questions but felt tongue-tied. Zaïf, on the other hand, seemed to have no problem talking and was just about to when the Great Hall fell silent at the sound of someone clearing their throat. It was just then that Mae realized that the stool and the Sorting Hat was gone, and professor McGonagall had taken a seat by the teachers' table.

"Welcome," a calm and steady voice rang out, belonging to a white-haired man with a long, matching beard. She recognised him immediately from the chocolate frog card she had opened on the train. He had the bluest eyes Mae had ever seen on a person.

"Welcome back to most, and welcome for the first time to a few. It fills my heart with joy and head with inspiration to see you all here this evening. However, my stomach is achingly empty, and so I bid you: dig in!"

Delighted cheers followed headmaster Dumbledore's welcome and a couple of students banged their fists against their table, making the cutlery clink. Before Mae had a chance to blink, the empty plates and trays before her were filled with so much food, her mouth fell open. She didn't even recognize half of it. The sheer quantity was overwhelming and it all looked deceptively delicious. Her mouth watered and stomach rumbled.

"I'm glad they didn't lie about the food," Zaïf said, helping herself to a generous amount of mashed potatoes. "I don't like violence, but I would've been forced to hurt them if they had."

Feeling distracted enough by the magical food, Mae's curiosity broke through her shyness. "Hurt who?"

"My big brothers," Zaïf explained, chewing off a piece of asparagus. "Got six of them, all graduated from here. Rai and I were two afterthoughts; happy accidents, if you will. Anyway, they haven't shut up about the food here so I wasn't prepared to be disappointed. I haven't eaten anything since breakfast, in respect for this feast."

"You and Rai are twins." She needed it confirmed.

"Unfortunately. And apparently we need to do everything together," she shot Rai a glare as she said it. He simply raised his arms up in defence, mouth full of food. "Including houses. I've been stuck with him, literally, my entire existence — still that Hat couldn't give me a bloody break."

Mae didn't know what to say, so she kept quiet and went with an awkward half-smile. In comparison to Zaïf, she felt like a gust of wind versus a full blown hurricane. It was hard to keep pace.

"You got any siblings?" Mae shook her head. "Lucky. I mean, I love them all, but I can't stand them."

"Hey!"

"Anyway, let's not talk about my family, let's talk about you. Who are you?"

Now. That was the sort of conversation Mae had absolutely no motivation to dive into, especially not with potentially new friends. There were too many aspects of herself she wanted to keep hidden, which was a difficult task when you were a fundamentally honest person. Lies had never come easy, despite the truth being harder.

"Er, me? I'm… I'm just Mae."

"Alright, Just Mae," Zaïf grinned. "What do you like? What do you hate? Where are you from? When's your birthday?"

"Er…"

"Are you going to let her eat?"

Sebastian cut in unexpectedly, having been quiet since greeting the twins. He kept his attention on his plate, not looking their way whilst the two girls looked his. Mouth dropping in offence, Zaïf glared at him.

"I'm just asking questions," Zaïf defended, this time seeming to be actually ruffled by Sebastian's attitude. A blush had even appeared on her cheeks. "We're not all surly grumps like you, Seb. Some of us wants to get to know other people."

"I can tell, by the way you're Skeeter's Corner-ing Mae."

"You're such a spoilsport," Zaïf muttered, stabbing her food. "I can't believe my unluck. Of all the houses-"

"H-how do you know each other?" Mae wondered, wanting to defuse the tense mood.

"How do I know anyone?" Zaïf whined woefully. "We're cousins."

"Cousins?" Mae said, surprise clear on her face. Was everyone related to everyone? "That's- that's nice."

"It's a nightmare," Zaïf contradicted. "Imagine your entire life being a never-ending Sunday roast."

She couldn't begin to imagine, having never been to one, but she didn't need to tell Zaïf that. Instead she continued to finish off her plate, and Zaïf continued to talk.

"I have seven siblings, my parents both have seven siblings, who all have seven gazillion children. I'm drowning in family."

"Which you conveniently don't mind around the holidays or our birthday," Rai quipped from his end.

"I'm going to make sure it's only gonna be my birthday if you don't shut up, Rai."

The feast rolled on with Zaïf explaining just about everything that had ever happened to her in her life, and then some. Mae was soaking it up like a sponge. Rai continued to make smart comments that earned glares and slaps from his sister, and Sebastian's only contribution to the conversation (or, rather, monologue) was rolling his eyes or pointedly refusing to answer when spoken to. All in all, it was one of the best times Mae had ever had.

Joining the Ravenclaw table that evening had only been seven others; all boys. Compared to the amount of students that had been Sorted, she felt that the total amount of Ravenclaw first years (eleven) was bizarrely low. Judging by the conversations going on around her amongst the older Ravenclaw students, she had not been the only one to notice.

"How many Gryffindors are there?"

"I count twenty-three. Fecking hell."

"Twenty Slytherins and nineteen Hufflepuffs. That gives us about fifteen percent of the first year population. Hogwarts' turning to shite."

"I think Hogwarts is rather fantastic, actually," a soft voice cut through the bitter musings of the older students. Mae glanced over at a girl with pale eyes, pale skin and pale hair — she looked straight out of a forest fairytale. "Despite all the Nargles."

"Says you, Luna," the boy who had claimed Hogwarts was no longer maintaining previous years' quality. "You're around the Gryffs more than you are us nowadays, of course you don't mind them literally taking over."

"I don't think they're taking over, Marcus. They're too impulsive for that, they lack the strategic cunning that that would require… Hm." Luna suddenly frowned and seemed to think something over. "Unless Hermione Granger were to lead this takeover, that is. She could probably do it, yes."

Mae tuned back to Zaïf's retelling of her seventh birthday party which had been interrupted by a Vampire or Werewolf — Mae had missed that part — only for the hall to fall silent once more. Again, the headmaster had taken place by the podium and was smiling out at them.

"I hope the feast has been in your favour, it certainly was in mine. I do believe I've eaten one treacle tart too many tonight, indeed," Albus Dumbledore confessed to the sounds of low chuckles.

"There's no such thing as too much treacle, Sir!" A voice called out from the Gryffindor table.

"Valid point, Mr. Weasley," professor Dumbledore nodded with great solemnity before he continued. "Now, I do have to — before we send you off to your beds — explain some rules and guidelines we expect you all to respect here at Hogwarts. In no particular order, please avoid the Forbidden Forest unless you want to die a very painful death; do not anger our lovely Giant Squid, but do give her a cuddle if the opportunity presents itself; and lastly, do not wander the castle past curfew. It's unnecessarily dangerous. We shall have a splendid year together if you take this to heart."

Between forbidden forests and giant squids, Mae wasn't sure whether it was the time for laughter or time for her to glance at the exits. What kind school had to warn their students of painful deaths? Looking around her, she saw only two people reflecting the same kind of concern she had regarding the headmaster's rules — two fellow Ravenclaw first years. If she had to guess, they were muggleborns like her, for neither the Kandemirs or Sebastian batted a single eye, and she knew they were from magical families.

"Now, the hour is upon us and sleep awaits. Please, have a good night and do not forget to dream."

As chairs scraped against the floor, Mae followed the motions automatically, her head still on the safety guidelines. There was still so much she didn't know about Hogwarts — about magic — that meant she couldn't truly enjoy herself just yet. She couldn't tell the difference between the jokes and the warnings. Beyond the delicious feast, the fascinating decor and the colourful characters, still lay a confusion and disbelief that wouldn't quite let go of her; that wouldn't let the knot in her stomach leave her to enjoy herself fully. Everything was too strange and foreign, still.

"— or would you absolutely hate that and want to switch houses altogether?"

Coming out of her head and into the Great Hall, Mae gave Zaïf a startled look as she realised a question had been asked but she had missed it completely.

"Pardon me?"

"I just said," Zaïf said, not at all bothered by the shoulders bumping into her as they began to exit the Great Hall. "I hope we get placed in the same room or else I'll go to professor Flitwick and demand we become roommates. Unless you're already sick of me, that is."

Mae was about to ask who professor Flitwick was, but Rai's mouth was quicker than hers.

"You're literally the only two girls, where do you reckon you'll end up if not together?"

"Well, we could be forced to be put with older students, Rai, I don't know! I'm not on the Ravenclaw Housing and Sleeping Arrangements committee."

"I wouldn't want-" Mae cleared her throat as she lowered her voice a tad, looking to Zaïf with a hesitant, but nonetheless sincere and open expression. Despite being polar opposites, Zaïf had quickly grown on Mae. The Kandemir girl was outgoing, loud and slightly all over the place — Mae didn't mind that one bit, but actually quite enjoyed it. "I'd rather share with you. I wouldn't want to be put with older students, I don't think."

"Oh, me neither," Zaïf agreed with deep nods. "It'd be like crashing a sleepover. Believe me, the summer before last mum forced me to share one of the cottages with Theeia and her friends and — Merlin's pants— it was like being a wooden spoon in a room filled with a thousand nifflers."

Mae smiled with a nod, though she only understood about sixty percent of Zaïf's analogy. She had heard of sleepovers but never been to one. Theeias, Merlin's pants and nifflers on the other hand were utterly unheard of and certainly not things she had been to. It felt awkward asking for a clarification, though. Zaïf and Rai had already gone into a round of arguing over who's cottage-sharing-with-which-cousin had been the worst. The time for answered questions had passed her by.

"It's like a pet — an animal — that collects shiny and valuable things, a niffler."

Looking over her shoulder, she tilted her head slightly and met Sebastian's eyes. His hands were in the pockets of his trousers making him look relaxed and like he hadn't just gone out of his way to explain something to Mae the Left-Out Muggleborn.

"They're sneaky thieves," he continued. "A wooden spoon would stand out and be utterly uninteresting to a room full of them."

"Oh, I see," Mae tried to hide her surprise. She wasn't used to friendliness, though she certainly wished to be one day. Giving him a grateful smile, Mae tried to convey how much she appreciated his explanation. "Thank you, Sebastian. That makes much more sense, actually."

The only acknowledgment her gratitude got was a minuscule shrug of his shoulders. He had been considerably less talkative during the feast than he had been on the train — then again, so had Mae. Her reasons were clear to her, but his weren't. He'd had every opportunity to engage but hadn't. His lack of interest in others did worry her a bit, for she considered herself to be an 'other'. She feared that he would distance himself from now on, move on from their acquaintance now that he had a broader variety to choose from. She had already grown attached to the idea of him as her friend. Patient, knowledgeable, kind underneath his standoffish attitude — Mae wasn't particularly keen on losing his friendship. And although coming off as someone not quite friendly, he did have that aforementioned coolness about him that she knew people would be drawn to. It would not be shocking to see him rise in the social hierarchy at Hogwarts — if he wanted to — something Mae was dead sure she would never.

In all of this, Zaïf was a pleasant surprise. She became another safety blanket that created a reassurance that perhaps Mae would not have to go through this entirely alone. Not to mention the fact that Zaïf was a girl Mae's age, making it the first time Mae had ever connected with someone from the same gender and age. A true peer. Granted, she had never connected with anyone outside of literary figures, so the emphasis on similarities were not quite as groundbreaking. Zaïf being simply a real person was enough. Furthermore, they were two very different people, personality wise, which made it all the more exciting. Mae did feel more of an alignment with Sebastian than with the outgoing, energetic Zaïf — which was anything but negative. It was quite exhilarating, she thought, to experience someone who were so very different from herself. Intimidating, in the best possible way.

In a perfect world, she would be able to keep them both; have them compliment each other. One making references, the other explaining them. Rai, with his sharp wit, could also be in on a corner. Though Zaïf would probably have some objections to that.

"Ravenclaw first years, follow me."

Having exited the Great Hall out into the corridor, the eye-rolling Khalil from before called out and waved them over to a corner he had occupied whilst waiting for them to gather round him. The rest of the students were breaking off into different directions, some going up stairs whilst others went down long corridors. The only ones staying behind were seemingly the first years and one prefect from every house. It was glaringly clear how small a group the Ravenclaws were. Mae caught the older Ravenclaw's frown, as if he found the difference disturbing. He schooled his face into one void of emotions as he cleared his throat.

"Alright, first years," their little group shuffled nervously, everyone straightening their backs as he addressed them. Well, almost everyone. "My name is Khalil Acar. I'm one of Ravenclaw's six prefects and also the one who's been assigned to be your guide these upcoming weeks. This means that if you have any qu-"

"We got stuck with you? What about Theeia? Couldn't we have her?" Rai interrupted, earning nervous and panicked looks from his classmates. Except Zaïf and Sebastian, who simply stood with their arms crossed, neither disagreeing or agreeing with Rai's outburst. "At least she's got an ounce of civility in her."

"I wouldn't wish you on even my worst enemy, Raihan," Khalil bit out, looking every bit as unhappy as Rai did with the situation. "Now, be quiet and don't interrupt."

"You can't silence me, Khalil— I know my rights. "

"Moving on from that disgusting lack of respect towards your superiors, let-"

"Fight the power!"

"-me explain how we conduct ourselves, both as Hogwarts students but above all, as Ravenclaws," Khalil continued without a hitch, ignoring the Kandemir twins' passionate interruption. Zaïf had joined the opposition with a raised fist. "During your seven years here, the Ravenclaw tower will be your headquarters and its inhabitants your pseudo-family. We pride and manage ourselves in our founding mother Rowena Ravenclaw's image of wit and wisdom, and in doing so try to live up to that in the corridors, in the classrooms and through our interactions with other students."

Rai and Zaïf must have been sensing that Mae's nerves wouldn't have survived another one of their 'outbursts', for they didn't interrupt Khalil further. They did, however, restlessly look around and fiddle with their wands whilst the little introduction took place. Rai strolled over to start a conversation with a Knight inside a painting. A moving painting.

Mae had to give her all to keep the focus on prefect Khalil and not the magic surrounding her.

"You will find your schedules for the upcoming weeks' classes in your rooms and on it you can find the times for breakfast, lunch and supper. If you have any questions-" Mae caught the threatening yet also very tortured glance Khalil sent the twins. "Relevant and reasonable questions, do not hesitate to find me or one of the other prefects. The Head of Ravenclaw, professor Filius Flitwick, will also be available, just not tonight. He is currently battling a nasty cold and shall not be bothered. Any questions now, before we head up to the tower?"

An answering silence followed. Khalil nearly smiled.

"Alright. If you'd follow me, please."

"Merlin, I'm excited," Zaïf bounced towards Mae and grabbed a hold of her hand. "He didn't mention anything about the rooms, so I'm guessing we'll be sharing like everyone else. How brilliant?"

Only managing to nod due having her mouth dry from the unexpected hand holding, Mae let herself be led up the stairs by Zaïf. The physical contact made her fiercely uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as she would have been breaking it. Zaïf didn't notice, too busy commenting the whole way to the tower about the paintings and the expectations for Hogwarts. Ahead, Mae saw Rai walking next to Khalil. It looked as if the young Ravenclaw was doing an impressively good job at annoying the prefect; the glares and the tense shoulders of Khalil spoke volumes.

"How do you and Rai know Khalil?" Mae finally asked.

"Take a wild guess," Zaïf sighed.

Ah. Another relative.

"A cousin?"

"Unfortunately not removed," Zaïf muttered, rolling her eyes. It was very similar to the prefect's, now that Mae thought about it. "He's become an insufferable troll since he was made prefect. Dumbledore really doomed the whole family with that one. He hasn't shut up about his 'duties' and whatnot all summer. Parvati, another of my other cousins, stole his badge and he had the tantrum of the century. It was incredible."

"Won't you get in trouble for speaking to him like that?" Mae wondered, glancing nervously to the front where Khalil was trying to shake off a singing Rai, clinging to his robes. The song had something to do with pompous prefects and ridiculous Ravenclaws.

"Oh, most definitely. But we don't mind," Zaïf dismissed with a wave of her hand. "It's all worth it — we promised the whole family we'd drive him crazy if we were sorted into Ravenclaw. And, a promise is a promise."

"He didn't seem so bad," Mae carefully pointed out, feeling both a bit sorry for Khalil as well as nervous to be voicing an opposing opinion to that of Zaïf for the first time.

"He isn't. Not really. Just pretentious," Zaïf said, taking the three final steps of the stairs at once. Mae stumbled after. "We won't be complete gits. Enough to knock him down his horse, mind. It's just family politics, hun."

Having no authority on family politics, Mae didn't challenge Zaïf further. Instead she focused on the spiral staircase that Khalil had led them to.

Mae looked around and found Sebastian standing behind her to the left, fiddling with his wand between his hands. The seven other boys of Ravenclaw were gathered in front of her and Zaïf, having apparently divided themselves into two groups already; the two Mae had suspected were muggleborns stood together, joined by two other boys. The foursome were listening carefully to Khalil, still wearing nervous excitement on their faces. The other group were of the remaining three boys — they were talking amongst themselves, laughing and obviously friends from before.

Finally having pushed Rai off him, Khalil turned to the group and squared his shoulders, his nose in the air. Rai sniggered and walked over to easily join the boys of three.

"This is the entrance to our common room. I hope you were all paying attention on the way here, I'm not keen to act as your map."

Mae suddenly felt a rush of gratitude for Zaïf's hold on her hand, for it balanced out the rush of panic that erupted in her stomach. She hadn't been paying attention at all and had always been terrible at directions. All that, however, didn't seem quite as bad when she had someone next to her.

"Now, to enter our common room, you will be asked to answer a riddle. Answer it incorrectly, and the door will remain closed. Answer it correctly, and you will have access. It's one of the more brilliant ideas of our founding mother, Rowena Ravenclaw."

Khalil got them all up the spiral staircase quickly enough. There, standing in front of a door with a bronze knocker in the shape of an eagle, Khalil gave them all an expectant look. Then, the eagle began to speak.

"I can fly but have no wings. I can cry but I have no eyes. Wherever I go, darkness follows me. What am I?"

A silence followed.

"Well?" said Khalil.

Whilst Mae's mind was still repeating the riddle, Sebastian was opening his mouth.

"A cloud."

The door swung open and Khalil sent Sebastian a reluctantly pleased look.

"Alright, then. Come along, it's getting late."

It was. Mae could barely keep her eyes open and she was bone-tired from the excitement of the day (and, honestly, the stairs).

The spacious, circular common room they entered was adorned with Ravenclaw's colours and books covered almost every area of the walls. It was stunningly beautiful and nothing like anything Mae had ever seen. Some older students were occupying sofas and armchairs, either reading or having mellow conversations with each other.

"Oi, first years!"

Stepping out of an entrance next to a statue of an elegant woman Mae suspected was Rowena Ravenclaw herself, was a girl that looked to be Khalil's age. With straight, thick magenta coloured hair down to her hips, the girl looked magical enough to fit in with the ancient castle. The confidence that radiated from her was effortless and the grin on her face lit up her entire person.

"I'm surprised to see so many standing — I was sure Khalil would've bored you to death by the third floor."

"Sheer willpower, Thee." Rai replied without missing a beat, also he wearing a wide grin on his face.

Khalil looked closer in relations to Mount Vesuvius than he did the Kandemirs at the exchange between Rai and 'Thee' the Magenta Girl. Some of the people in the common room chuckled, which only seemed to deepen Khalil's frustrations.

"Oh, man, you got sorted into Ravenclaw, Rai?" The girl stopped next to Khalil, grimacing. "That's downright curse-material; I knew I shouldn't have gotten on Trelawney's bad side last year."

"Hey!"

"Will you two shut up," Khalil cut in heatedly, before turning to address only 'Thee'. "I didn't ask for your assistance only for you to undermine my authority, Theeia. Take the girls to their rooms and stop dilly dallying."

Mae decided to draw the conclusion that cousin Theeia and Thee the Magenta Girl was the same person.

"Of course, Khalil, absolutely." Theeia replied, clearly in mock-seriousness.

Clutching his heart as if in pain, Rai choked out something about 'dilly dallying' and 'easy target'.

"Girls, would you— oh, Agrippa's left toe, there's literally only two of you."

"We refuse to share with older students, Thee," Zaïf firmly said, tugging Mae along as they walked over to Theeia. "We won't do it."

"Calm down," Theeia's Scottish dialect popped out something fierce. Motioning for the two first year girls to head towards the entrance by the statue, Theeia put a hand on each girl's shoulder. They seemed to be a very touchy family. "You'll get your own dormitory, stop fussing. Who's your mate, Z?"

"This is Mae Lind, my best and dearest friend."

"Best friend, aye?"

"That's right," Zaïf confirmed with a stubborn nod. Theeia's dark brown eyes brightened with amusement.

"Padma's aunt Linda comment really ruffled your feathers, didn't it?"

"Did not! I don't even remember it. Though, since you brought it up — I don't remember aunt Linda ever having a Mae Lind."

"You Kandemirs really are mental."

"Oh, that's rich, coming from a Patil."

Mae felt like she had been thrown into some sort of warped reality, where the rules had all been switched. Not only was the wizarding bit of her new scenery immensely exotic, but so were the family dynamics being on display via Zaïf and her absurdly extended family. The only glance at families Mae had got were either from TV or very briefly at school when parents of her classmates picked their children up. Her upbringing had taken place at the very antithesis of family; an orphanage. Mae was overloading on new stimuli that made no sense to her.

"You're a quiet one, Mae Lind."

Looking up at Theeia Patil, Mae tried to collect herself from her tumultuous inner chaos.

"Sorry, I, erm…" she moved to push a strand of black hair behind her ear.

"Don't apologize, love. We never shut up. It takes years of practice to get a word in edgewise," Theeia gave her a reassuring, kind smile. "You excited to be at Hogwarts?"

Mae nodded gingerly, watching Theeia reach a closed door that said "First Years: Girls". Along the rest of the corridor were six other doors, one for each year.

"Where are the boys sleeping?" Zaïf asked, following her cousin closely as they entered their dormitory.

"Just right of the entrance, opposite direction. You can't go there, though, and they can't come here. If you try, you just end up back at the entrance. Clever, infuriating magic that."

Mae was only partly listening, too busy looking around the large dormitory. Like the common room, their sleeping quarters were circular and Ravenclaw colours were proudly decorating the room with bookshelves covering most of the walls. The big difference was the two beds, the wardrobes and the two vanities.

"This is- this is our room?" Mae choked.

"Wicked, eh?" Theeia beamed, looking around appreciatively.

Mae could hardly believe it. The overnight change of going from a rickety travel bed to a sturdy, big, oak bed that looked so soft she wondered if it was half-cloud… it was beyond her.

"You've got an owl?" Zaïf asked, pointing towards the nightstand by the bed closest to the window.

"Edur!" Mae gasped, scrambling over to her owl which was cooing happily inside his cage.

"He's adorable! His name's Edur?"

"It means snow," Mae explained as she fiddled with the cage's door. "I'm not very good with names."

"Oh, I think it's cute," Theeia said by the door. "Alright, lassies, I'll let you settle. Breakfast is between seven and nine, and since it's Sunday tomorrow, don't worry about classes. Any questions?"

Mae shook her head, watching Edur escape the cage and take off flying around the room with reckless abandon.

"Great. I'll be down the hall, so just knock if you need anything. Get those hours in, and a couple of sweet dreams while you're at it."

"Night, Thee."

"Goodnight," Mae said, the words unnatural. Had she ever wished anyone goodnight? Had anyone ever wished her a goodnight before?

"I'm absolutely knackered," Zaïf announced, spreading out on her bed, not noticing Mae's sad epiphany. "I'm so glad there's no classes tomorrow."

"Sorry, I should've asked — do you mind Edur flying about? He seems a bit restless and the store owner said to let him fly as much as possible so he can build, er, some confidence."

Zaïf waved her hand dismissively, shaking her head. "Of course, I don't mind a bit."

Unpacking took longer than Mae would have expected but despite being utterly exhausted, she enjoyed it more than any other late night she had spent awake. Zaïf kept up her monologues, adding more stories about her and her family, and sharing anecdotes and explanations about some of the things she had brought with her to Hogwarts. A few genuine smiles and a chuckle managed to escape Mae despite some unease, and that was okay.

Tucked away in the too-good-for-words oak bed, Mae relished in the fact that it was the first time she had gone to bed not only completely fed, but buzzing off of companionship. Worries about the unknowns and the uncertainties of her place in the world touched on faintly soothed.

She had never fallen asleep feeling quite so happy.


	5. Chapter 4

"Go, tell the Spartans

stranger passing by,

that here, obedient to Spartan law,

we dead of Sparta lie."

— Simonides of Ceos, [c. 556–468 BCE]

Chapter four: _Liaisons of Necessity_

"Go tell the stupid idiots, thou who passest by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie."

Sirius Black was a man of many things, but patience had never come easy to him. Neither had the system of labour — not even labour he had a great passion for — when it called for him to work overtime. What did come easy to him, on the other hand, was melodrama and complaining, which he, with his feet perched on the desk of his boss and friend, James Potter, was doing in excellent form. Much to aforementioned James Potter's dismay.

"Completely rational use of that epigram, Padfoot," James muttered as he stepped further into his office of which he had just arrived to. With a manner of a man who had many a-times done the action before, he pushed Sirius' feet off of the desk, causing the moody man to nearly fall out of James' chair. "Now, get out of here. If you don't finish that report before six you'll miss the dinner."

"Oh, no." Sirius stood. His tone flat. "Miss out on Fudge's super duper, terribly exciting dinner? Now, I wouldn't want that."

"Write the bloody report, Sirius."

"Make me, boss man."

"I just did," James replied tiredly. The way he all but fell down onto his chair magnifying the obvious exhaustion on his nowadays wrinkled face. Much like all Potters, James was aging wonderfully into a handsome, mature man with crows feet and all. However, all who had known Fleamont Potter during the years _he _had approached forty would have noticed that the younger Potter looked a bit more weary and worn than his father had, at that age. "I need to finish this letter before six so fuck off so I can have time for a shower later."

Sirius, no longer willing to be difficult for banter's sake, had the look of someone who was about to be willing to be difficult for friendship's sake. Something was wrong and Sirius was going to acknowledge it.

"Everything alright, Prongs?"

The amount of times throughout the years that he had asked James that questions was high enough to be considered catchphrase-worthy. Sirius had an eerie sense of reading James that often meant that nothing went unsaid between the pair. For better and for worse.

"I'm fine, it's fine." But it wasn't, and both of them knew that. So, James sighed and continued, leaning back in his seat, massaging his face with his hands. "Bertha Jorkins' still missing and Harry's caught about two winks of sleep the past week."

"The Occlumency lessons aren't working?" Sirius asked, knowing that Lily had spent all summer training Harry in the ancient, complex magic.

"Oh, it's working, it's been working," James muttered, his eyes suddenly flashing bitterly. "But Lily suspects he's, whether consciously or not, not being mindful enough to keep it up."

"She thinks he _wants_ the nightmares?" Sirius question did not have an iota of judgment or displeasure at Lily's harsh theory on Harry. It was merely curious, for Sirius considered Lily to be his smartest friend and her theories more often than not ended up being correct.

"She thinks he's curious about it, that he wants to have the link — or whatever it is — open."

"So he can spy."

James didn't answer verbally, but the dark expression on his face was answer enough.

"But he knows the dreams can be manipulated. He knows we can't be sure Voldemort hasn't discovered the link as well," Sirius said, frowning. Which he knew was hypocritical of him. If he had been in Harry's position he, too, would have been curious and taken peeks. But he wasn't in Harry's position. He was in the position of being Harry's godfather, which meant he wanted Harry to do the exact opposite of what he would have done.

"We're worried that he's going to abandon it altogether now that he's away," James said, referencing the Occlumency. "We've talked to Albus and Minnie about it, but they can only do so much. We can't _force _him or keep watch in his bedroom every night."

"You could ask Ron to- oh," Sirius cut himself off, almost rolling his eyes along with James. "Yeah, 'course, you've already done that."

"Talked to Hermione about it, too," James shrugged. "But, like us, they can only do so much. You know what Harry's like."

"Stubborn. Can't imagine who he gets that from."

James gave a small grin before quickly going back to looking overwhelmingly tired. "I don't know, mate. Everything's going on at the same time. If it's not Harry, it's missing Ministry members, or dead Azkaban prisoners. Or Moony being attacked by that Umbridge idiot."

"Oh, shit," Sirius slapped his forehead, looking punched in the stomach. "I forgot- Prongs, sorry, I completely forgot that's what the dinner's about."

James gave a humourless smile and raised his eyebrows. "However much Fudge makes me want to Living Death-myself, it's a golden opportunity to do some influencing."

"How many votes do we need?"

"Twenty four. Maybe just twenty three — it depends on if Lily managed to convince Elbert yesterday. I missed her this morning so I never got the chance to ask."

With Lily working the night shift at St. Mungo's, she and James usually only saw each other for a few hours or even minutes during the week. The very idea of having to waste a rare evening where neither had to work on one of Fudge's pompous dinners was nauseating. However, Umbridge having her Anti-Werewolf Bill passed was even more so, which meant that the Potters and company were going to use all of their reluctant social standing to convince people to absolutely demolish the bill.

"I'll have the report done in half an hour," Sirius said with determination burning behind his eyes, before rushing to his desk.

James, grateful that Sirius had realized the importance of today going smoothly, buried his face in his hands and sighed heavily. Life truly wasn't meant to be easy, he decided.

* * *

Mae decided — after her first class with professor McGonagall — that life truly was exceptionally amazing. Never in a million years would she have envisioned for herself all the things her first week at Hogwarts had delivered. From waking up and getting to spend her days learning magic, often alongside people she felt she could genuinely call friends, to being _heard_ and welcomed by adults in positions of power… It was almost too good to be true. Not a single person at Hogwarts had yet made her feel unwanted or like she didn't belong — not even the grumpy Argus Filch, who had treated her just like he treated everyone else; with contempt and impatience. Even that had made her hug her school books tighter to her chest, trying to stop a smile from materializing whilst Zaïf ranted about Filch being a bully for yelling at them. She had never experienced anything _together _with anyone else before, so even being yelled at had been a memory she filed away for a rainy, St. Jude's day.

The reason behind her first class with professor McGonagall making her declare life 'exceptionally amazing' was all because of a rat. Specifically, the rat she managed — on the first try — to transform into a perfectly alright cup. Not familiar with how rare a successful first try was, she had merely been relieved that she had done it. Then, when she raised her gaze to observe the shocked faces of Zaïf and even Sebastian, she'd felt her heart skip a beat. Which was nothing in comparison to how her heart had _stopped _when Zaïf shouted:

"Professor McGonagall! Professor McGonagall! Look what Mae did!"

Thinking she was being told on, Mae had felt her face lose colour as she'd watched the professor cross the room with furrowed eyebrows, heading straight for their table.

"We don't shout in this classroom, Ms. Kandemir, lest you forget the rules of basic manners," McGonagall had said, obviously displeased with Zaïf's outburst. However, when the witch let her gaze dance over the table and spotted the cup next to two live rats, her displeasure had been replaced by raised eyebrows.

"She did it, though!" Zaïf had exclaimed. "Look! On her first go and everything. That must be worth a point or two, right professor?"

"Miss Lind, is that true?" professor McGonagall had asked. The green eyes of Minerva McGonagall had failed at connecting with Mae's downcast brown ones. "Did you manage that on your first attempt?"

"Yes, professor," Mae had given a single nod, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. In the corner of her eye she'd seen Sebastian shift in his seat, as if uncomfortable. Zaïf had been staring wide-eyed and expectantly at McGonagall.

"Well," the old witch had said in a subdued tone. Then, she'd paused for a few moments as she studied the cup further. The desks around them had begun to quiet down, curiously looking over at the Zaïf-prompted situation. "Well done, Miss Lind. I should say that's deserving of five points to Ravenclaw, for impressive success."

Mae had been so shocked that she'd only been able to react by raising her head and stare at professor McGonagall with her mouth hanging open. The sight had seemed to soften the headmistress and, in the right light, it might have been possible to catch the small, amused smile curling ever so discreetly in the corner of her mouth. Zaïf had silently made a little dance of celebrations as McGonagall turned her back on them and Mae had caught appreciative grins from their small group of other Ravenclaw first years around the classroom.

"How's it feel to be the first bread earner of our year?" Zaïf asked later during dinner, looking smug and pleased, as if she herself had been the one to have been rewarded. In a struck-by-lightning kind of way, Mae recognized that that was exactly how Zaïf _should_ feel. Not only because, technically, Zaïf had been the one who brought the rat-cup to professor McGonagall's attention, but because they were friends. Mae would have been as excited if Zaïf had been rewarded, or Sebastian. They were a team by now, winning and losing together. It was an exhilarating realization.

"I- Did that really happen?" Mae asked a bit breathless, nervously pushing strands of hair behind both ears.

"You weren't lying when you said you like learning," Sebastian said, giving her one of his rare grins.

"Have you done that spell before? Merlin, all my family does is hound me, they never teach me something actually practical," Zaïf said, rolling her eyes. "So how'd you learn it?"

"Er," Mae gave Sebastian an involuntary glance, as if seeking his help. He was so far the only one who knew she was a muggleborn. It wasn't that she was actively trying to hide it, but it just never came up in a way where mentioning it would be natural. "I mean, last night in the library gave me time to really read about the theories and all."

"You've never performed it before? Not even at home?" Zaïf exclaimed.

"I don't-" Mae cleared her throat. She didn't know why she felt so nervous, but she wasn't about to hide from her friend. "That is, I didn't know anything about magic until a few weeks ago, when I got the letter. I haven't had a chance, or dared, to practice any on my own."

For a second, Zaïf looked completely uncomprehending. Then, it seemed to dawn on her and she flushed bright red.

"Oh, I really _am _self-centered, aren't I?" She sounded heart-broken.

"What?" Mae blurted out, startled by the change of subject. Her stomach dropped at the sight of Zaïf visibly upset. "No! You're not self-absorbed, I promise, I-"

"Don't ruin her sudden burst of self-awareness, Lind!" Rai reprimanded from a few seats down where he sat with his friends. He had his fork halfway to his mouth, mashed potatoes falling from it. "She's on to something!"

"Shut up, Rai," Zaïf said distractedly, having turned with a remorseful look on her face to clasp Mae's hands. "Honestly, Mae, I'm an awful friend. We've known each other almost a week and I didn't even know you're a muggleborn! I'm the absolute worst."

"You're not the worst," Mae insisted firmly, a bit thrown off by the hand holding. So far, any form of touch she had received had been in the forms of either violence or clinical navigation. No one had ever touched her kindly. "You know loads about me, more than anyone else. Besides, I don't think what kind of blood I have is important knowledge."

"Of course it's not!" Zaïf agreed fiercely. "But still, I should've known. I talk to much. _At _people. Everyone's told me so all my life."

"Hear, hear!" Rai's voice came from the background.

Mae frowned and firmly said, "I don't talk very much at all, so it makes for a perfect balance."

She wasn't at all comfortable with Zaïf feeling bad about a quality Mae liked so much.

"Don't feel bad, please, Zaïf. I don't, so it doesn't make sense that you would."

Instead of replying with words, as Mae had expected, Zaïf did something extremely strange and surprising: she leaned forward and crushed Mae in a tight hug. Zaïf must've not have noticed the way Mae's entire body froze at the contact, for she kept hugging her for a long time and when she broke away, she was beaming with happiness. Not at all aware of how Mae was now pale and uncomfortable. There was a lot happening for Mae, all at once. A lot of firsts in the span of half a day for her emotions, brain and body to all be stable and organized. Too much good was turning out to be tiring. But it turned out be an exhaustion she welcomed, late at night, when she tried to come to terms with her new life. Being worried about hugs and friendships were a far cry from being worried about corporal punishments and Piers Johnsons.

The first two months of Hogwarts and the Magical Life was as amazing as it was terrifying. Transfiguration and Herbology quickly became her favourite subjects, much due to the fact that professor McGonagall and professor Sprout were turning out to be her favourite teachers. Which was interesting, for the two witches were vastly different in both teaching styles and personality. Whilst McGonagall was a bit stricter and traditional in a disciplinary sort of way, Sprout was far more bubbly and easy-going. Where with McGonagall Mae held a deep respect and awe for the witch, with Sprout Mae just felt infinitely comfortable and welcomed.

Perhaps her favourable feelings towards Sprout had a lot to do with the Herbology teacher being the one who had introduced Mae to the Wizarding world. Or, perhaps Mae just enjoyed a professor who felt more like a friend than a authority figure. But whatever it was, not everyone shared Mae's feelings towards Sprout — Zaïf and Sebastian hated her.

"She's so _weird_," Zaïf complained over dinner. "Who does that? I mean, I'm not complaining, but it's just… just _weird_."

"She's unprofessional," Sebastian declared, surprising Mae by joining in. He usually kept himself to sarcastic comments and scoffs. To hear him not only join Zaïf for dinner table-discussion, but also agree with her was unprecedented. "You can't just _forget _to plan a lesson. It's as if she's trying to live up to her name."

Mae had not minded one bit that when they arrived to Herbology that morning, professor Sprout had confessed to having forgotten about their Friday morning class. She had then proceeded by announcing that they were going to brew some traditional Hallow's Eve pumpkin tea. A fairly easy thing to do, despite the fact that the pumpkins had been well over two metres tall. It had essentially been a lesson of making tea and sitting around, talking. A cozy affair that Mae enjoyed immensely.

"What _about_ her name?" Mae asked curiously, especially since Sebastian's tone had indicated something negative, and she couldn't for her life figure out what was so bad about 'Sprout'.

"People call her Flower Eating Sprout," Zaïf was quick explain. Sebastian sat back, arms crossed and a raised eyebrow as if to say, 'see?'

"Why?"

"'Cos back in the day she was a Flower Eater — someone, ah, who ate flowers that make you glow and laugh uncontrollably. She's famous for being super off-book and a bit bonkers, in terms of teaching. She was also best friends with that Troll activist Heliotrope Willis, you know. Mum says they spent most of the 60s locked up for all the protests they held."

Mae didn't know how to process half of the information that had been laid out before her.

"She has a job to do," Sebastian said and for the first time, Mae could hear the wealth he came from. "Sitting around drinking pumpkin tea because you forgot to do your job isn't it."

"It's only happened once," Mae defended, a bit bothered by the attack aimed at a teacher she liked quite a good deal. "And she did explain how to grow _Gigantus __Pepō_, so we were taught something."

"I don't consider making tea worthwhile my academic time," Sebastian muttered.

Mae opened her mouth to argue, but Zaïf put a halting hand on her arm. One corner of her lip was turned up and it was clear that she was amused by Sebastian's rare participation. "Don't bother, Mae. Sebastian comes from a very Anti-Weird family. You'll waste your breath trying to convince him to like Flower Eating Sprout."

Whatever an Anti-Weird family was, Mae didn't know. But she did know that hearing Zaïf say that had made Sebastian look positively ill. And after that, he didn't say anything for the whole day. He didn't withdraw from their company, per se — he never did — but he was very distant and it further peaked Mae's curiosity about the family he did not talk about.

Although _he_ never talked about them, everyone else around him (sans Mae) seemed quite familiar with them nonetheless. She understood the significance of his name; she had been to Ollivander's wand shop herself and met the rather eccentric wandmaker. But other than that, she had no clue what the deal was. Just that the deal meant a lot to everyone who knew Sebastian, and Sebastian himself. Much like, she reckoned, _her _deal with _her _family (or rather, lack thereof) meant a lot to her. That was also why she loathed herself immensely for the question she asked Zaïf late one evening after supper.

"Zaïf, how are you related to Sebastian?"

It felt like a betrayal asking about Sebastian behind his back, but Mae felt positive she was about to explode from her ignorance. Everyone else walked around knowing what she could not even begin to fathom in regards to her friend's mysterious background. And he... seemed so reluctant to talk about his family that she truly didn't want to put him through it. But, asking his relative about it, who just so happened to be her dorm mate, in their private bed quarters? Sure, it was going behind his back but no one would know.

"My aunt on my mum's side married Sebastian's uncle. Paternal uncle."

"So, you're…?"

"Seeing him at Sunday roasts sometimes. We're like, I dunno, cousins somehow."

Mae hummed, trying to seem casually curious as she folded some newly washed clothes into her drawer.

"Why?"

"Just wondering."

Zaïf seemed to buy it, and also seemed to move on. However, as Mae had come to expect from her friend, nothing could be taken at face value with Zaïf. She was not a linear kind of person, where you could assume something about her. Believing the topic to be dropped because Mae didn't pursue it further (having just asked one question about it had made her break into a cold sweat), but Zaïf surprised by voluntarily offering more than asked of her.

"We're not connected or anything, really, by blood— aunt Avin never had children with Pierre. Even if we were, it would've been the good side of his family, anyway."

Mae couldn't help it. "Good side?"

"The Ollivander side," she replied, as if the clarification would be enough.

"As opposed to the… what-side?"

Zaïf stopped her own folding and looked across the room to meet Mae's questioning gaze with a startled one of her own.

"Oh, you don't know?"

"Know what?"

Zaïf looked conflicted, a look Mae had never seen on her before. "I thought he'd told you because, you know, you two are pretty close."

Pretty close? Mae considered Sebastian her friend — her first friend, which was significant — but it wasn't like they were sharing secrets or even basic information. The longest conversation they had had to date was the one they'd shared on the way to Hogwarts. Sure, they had not drifted apart during their time at school, but neither had they grown any closer. They sat next to each other in class and did homework together; but Zaïf was the one Mae actually _talked _to. Even when she knew they shouldn't_..._

"He never mentions his family. Not even the 'good side'."

"Well, to him the good side is also the bad side, you know?" Zaïf made a grimace.

Mae didn't know.

"I don't follow."

Halting her organizing of her wardrobe, Zaïf let out a heaving sigh, stood, crossed the room and moved to jump onto Mae's bed so that they weren't talking to each other from across the room. Mae paused in her own folding, keeping her place on the floor, kneeling before the opened drawer.

"Alright, so Sebastian's dad is Jacques Ollivander, first son of Garrick Ollivander, genius wandmaker."

Mae nodded to show that she was following so far.

"Now, the Ollivanders are all a bunch of geniuses. Uncle Pierre was a famous potion maker and made a bunch of elixirs and stuff. I think we'll read about him in Potions later on, actually. Anyway. Sebastian's dad is the Ministry Ambassador for France and used to be a pretty famous writer. He wrote loads of books about dark magic that mum says I'm not allowed to read until I'm seventeen," Zaïf sounded infinitely put out by that. "So, they're all very important people, mind. And, well, Sebastian's dad married another very important person, but, erm… unlike the Ollivanders, what makes _that _family important is their infamous way of being wank- sorry, I mean, er, idiots."

"What family's that?"

Zaïf looked reluctant. "It's really not my place to say… I mean, if he hasn't told you himself, he probably doesn't want you to know, and…"

Although disappointed, Mae honestly felt a bit relieved. She agreed with Zaïf. Going behind Sebastian's back like she was didn't feel right. Her curiosity paled in comparison to the fact that Sebastian had his own reasons behind not talking about his family. Besides, he had never asked Mae about _hers_. The least she could do was respect his lack of sharing when she herself was doing the same.

"Yeah, you're right. He-"

"Black. The Black family," Zaïf blurted out, as if she couldn't help it, her eyes wide and mouth agape. "Merlin, I'm such a blabbermouth, I think there's something wrong with me. Genuinely."

Mae, unsurprisingly, knew exactly nothing about any Black family. All she knew was the anxiety she felt about even hearing the name. She had not been supposed to, and it made itself blatantly known by the guilt bubbling in her stomach. _You shouldn't have asked_, she reprimanded herself.

"You can't tell him I told you, Mae," Zaïf begged. "Please. He's so sensitive when it comes to his family. And I get it, you know, I do. Especially because you're… and his mum is… I mean, it's all very confusing."

The ice was thin beneath Mae's metaphorical feet. It took all her self control not to beg Zaïf to explain in detail what on earth she was talking about, but she had crossed too many lines already. Besides, Zaïf wasn't the one she wanted nor should hear it from. It wasn't right and Mae knew it. And as difficult as it was, she needed to also _act_ like she knew it.

"I won't tell, I swear. Forget I asked."

* * *

Both girls feigned forgetfulness rather well that night, going to bed without further discussing Sebastian and his family. Feigning forgetfulness, however, was not the same as actual forgetfulness. Something that became blatantly clear to Mae over the weekend.

Any interaction with Sebastian felt foul and dishonest. The guilt was eating away at her and was made worse every time he explained something to her, or gave her a meaningful look whenever Zaïf did something silly. The friendship he was so effortlessly offering her felt undeserved and on Sunday, Mae was at her breaking point.

"I'm just _saying_," Rai argued, flushed with frustration as he stepped out of the Ravenclaw Tower. He had gotten himself into an argument with his sister about the proper way to subdue a Devil's Snare. "It's more effective to just use a _Lumos Solem _spell than try one's hand at relaxing."

"Effective? Are you crazy? Movement and struggling makes it strangle you faster, _ergo_-" Zaïf had heard Flitwick use the word once during class and had picked it up like a cold. "Moving to properly use the spell makes it far riskier than to just relax and-"

Mae wasn't listening to the argument at all, too busy trying to find a hint of courage for the plan she had organized the evening before — when sleep evaded her due to a guilt-ridden mind. Now, in the light of day (or rather, in the dawn of the day, heading to the Hallowe'en feast), her plan seemed ridiculously difficult. Impossible. Beyond her.

"Mae?"

The sound of the person she could barely look at brought her back to the present. It made her aware that she had yet to step out of the Tower and Sebastian was holding open the door, waiting for her.

"Oh. Sorry."

With dread she noticed that Zaïf and Rai were already halfway down the stairs, leaving her practically alone with Sebastian — which had been the first step of her aforementioned plan. Unfortunately, she didn't actually want to proceed with the plan just then, and now that it was effortlessly under way her palms grew damp and her heart sped up.

_Now or never. Now or never_. Despite everything in her screaming for the latter, her mouth seemed to prefer the former.

"CanItalkwithyouforamomentpleaseSebastian?"

She reached out and grasped the sleeve of his robe, halting him in his step towards the stairs. Looking thoroughly confused and even a bit concerned, Sebastian turned towards her and she immediately let go of him, taking a step back.

"... Sure. What is it?"

_I'm a terrible friend and I went behind your back to get more information about you, information you obviously don't want me to know_ _and of which I had no right to seek out._ But instead of that verbalizing, it remained in the back of her throat as she opened and closed her mouth like a fish. All she managed was to stare at him like a deer in headlights, surely being perceived as absolutely insane. _Just spit it out!_

"Is it about why you've been acting so strange?"

God, she thought miserably. Not only was he a respectful friend, but an observant one. Mae sank deeper into her own self-loathing.

"I've-" she exhaled frustratedly through her nose. "I did something very unfair to you, Sebastian."

Sebastian reacted to the confession without moving as much as a muscle. He simply became very still and stared at her. She dropped her gaze to their feet. It took a couple of quiet moments for her to continue.

"You haven't asked me about my family, but I've been asking others about yours and I-"

"What about my family?" he cut off calmly, though his eyes were razor sharp. The air around them, already tense, became freezing cold.

Now, Sebastian had first and foremost been the person who had explained the wizarding world to her over chocolate frogs and pumpkin pasties. All mentions of his social standing and family's notability that followed him around had swiftly gone over Mae's head due to not at all being able to equate _her _Sebastian with everyone else's. However, the way he looked at her now made her feel acutely aware of his anciently regal features and shiny black shoes.

"I-," but Sebastian seemed to suddenly lose interest in hearing her reply to his question for he abruptly turned his back on her.

"Nevermind," he said simply. "You don't need to explain."

"But," she began, then frowned as he began to descend the stairs. "Wait, where are you going?"

"The feast. I'll sit by Rai tonight so don't worry about finding another seat."

Feeling a bit like she had been hit over the head then spun around a couple of times only to try to make her way through a veil of disoriented confusion, Mae tried to register what was happening. She had expected yelling or a heated argument — the way she had observed Zaïf handle conflicts. She had not expected Sebastian to walk away with a coldness wrapped around him like a second skin, hiding him perfectly.

"Another seat? Sebastian, wait," Mae willed her feet to move, even though she felt like she was moments from being ill. "Please, can we talk about it?"

"There's nothing to talk about," he said sharply, not sparing her another look. Mae stopped dead in her tracks, in the middle of the stairs, quite familiar with being dismissed. Lord knows she had built a life around it. Being dismissed, mind, was how one survived St. Jude's.

This time — _this _time — however, she welcomed the dismissal like a slap to her face. She didn't know much about friendships, but as she watched Sebastian disappear down the steps, she imagined she had become intimately familiar with the ending of one.

Her bottom lip began to quiver in a rare moment of allowing herself to acknowledge the hurt that threatened to slice her open. A part of her was annoyed with herself, and deeply so. It wasn't as if he had beat her over the head with a ruler, or kept her in a broom closet for two days without meals, or stomped to death with his feet a nest of innocent bird eggs… and she hadn't cried then. Why on earth would she cry now, over some words? Was Hogwarts making her soft? A part of her hoped so, she had longed for softness all her life. The other part of her was horrified, for she knew the world wasn't soft — not to her — and if she allowed herself to cry over words, then surely she would break quite easily when she was confronted by something harsher.

Rather numb and conflicted by the force of her own emotions, Mae failed to notice the rushed footsteps coming down the same stairs she stood in the middle of. Then again, even a vigilant person would have had a hard time noticing the dancing-on-air-like steps of the third year Ravenclaw girl. Either way, when Mae did notice, it was far too late.

"_Oh! Seven heavens!" _came the breathy exclaim.

Mae didn't hear it though, too busy stumbling down the steps in an alarming speed. Little did she know that as she was — quite literally — set in motion, so were events that would soon turn her world upside down. Once more.


	6. Chapter 5

"I have the urgency to hear you

joy to hear you

blessing to hear you

uneasiness to hear you

So

in short

I'm screwed

and radiant

perhaps more the former

than the latter

and also

vice versa."

— Mario Benedetti, 'Viceversa'

Chapter Five: Wonderfully Awful Mess

"What a wonderfully awful mess, Mae Lind."

It truly wasn't all that, Mae thought with a grimace. An awful mess, certainly. But wonderfully? No, not at all. Having her ankle stuck in between steps — steps of an apparently moving staircase — was not anything but utterly painful and mortifying. Not only had she fallen down multiple steps in the fashion of a ragdoll, but she had been forced to an abrupt stop by the staircase grabbing a hold of her foot mercilessly. The sound which had come from her ankle had been as worrying as the throbbing pain which followed it.

"Professor Trelawney did warn me not to wear my radishes today," Luna Lovegood, the unexpected pusher-of-first-years-down-stairs, said in a dreamily thoughtful tone.

Whatever radishes had to do with the situation, Mae wasn't sure. She wasn't about to ask, either.

"I suppose I should be more considerate of what other people tell me," Lovegood continued. "But Mae Lind, more often than not, other people are absolutely wrong."

Mae was listening with half an ear to what the third year Ravenclaw was saying, which was a most unusual thing for her to do. In fact, Luna Lovegood was a person that, when Mae was in earshot, she secretly gave all her attention to. Whether it was the fact that not a single person in the world could ever predict what would come out of the girl's mouth, or because of the naturally mesmerizing quality of Luna, Mae wasn't sure. But she always did lean in to listen in the common room, at dinner, or in the halls.

Right now, however, she found herself not as interested in having Luna Lovegood be fascinating or mesmerizing. Helpful, sure. Maybe even comforting. Discussing radishes? No.

"This isn't very good, is it?" Luna asked and sat down next to Mae's head, her long hair brushing Mae's shoulder. In that position Luna was all but looming over Mae who was lying on her back, one foot under the same step Luna sat on. "Do you speak, Mae Lind?"

Startled out of her own mortification at being directly addressed, Mae lifted her chin up to fix a disoriented gaze on Luna. How Luna knew her name — what is more, her full name — she decided to save energy wondering about later.

"I," she felt dizzy. "I do speak, yes."

"Pity. I never get to use Ne Verborum. You know, my father taught me NVL before he taught me English. Well, I suppose he technically taught me Elfish before he taught me English, but…"

Luna continued her probably very interesting rant. Again, Mae heard none of it. All she could think about was how her heartbeat was slowing down and so was her breathing, and strangely enough it didn't make her feel better to be calmer. It made the pain in her ankle no longer feel slightly dulled, but sharply, sharply intense.

"You look rather pale," said Luna, breaking through the overwhelming pain that held the majority of Mae's attention. "Are you alright?"

"I'm stuck."

"You are, yes. Indeed."

"I can't," Mae sucked in a sharp gasp through her mouth as she, as if to really emphasise how stuck she was, tried to get her foot out from under the step. "I can't get out."

"That is true."

"Could… Perhaps you could help me, please?" Mae asked, her voice strained but nonetheless polite. She didn't feel like being polite, though. She was growing rather impatient.

"Oh, no," Luna shook her head with an amused smile. "I haven't got the slightest clue as to how to get you out of that. Really, not a clue. I'd need to ask someone else."

Mae tried to swallow the sudden panic which arrived accordingly at the definitive, confident denial of a solution.

"Oh."

Luna got to her feet and, after having given Mae a genuinely kind and wide smile, began to descend the stairs. The panic intensified.

"Wait! No, wait," she cried out after the third year. "Don't leave me, please, I-"

"But I'm going to get Harry?" Luna replied, looking thoroughly confused.

"Harry?"

"Yes. He's the only one I know who got his foot stuck just like you. I'm going to get him — wait here."

Wait here? Mae's only response was staring after the girl with her mouth open, eyes wide and brain feeling like it was short circuiting. In a matter of seconds she had been denied and then offered help. She wasn't sure if she felt comforted, or extremely discomforted. Nearly two months in, and Mae was sure she had never heard of a teacher or staff member named 'Harry'. The only Harry she associated with Hogwarts was The Boy Who Lived-Harry, whom Mae knew was a friend of Luna's. Something that actually seemed to chagrin some people in Ravenclaw. Zaïf had explained that people felt that Luna spent more time with "the lions" than her own house — which Mae didn't find at all surprising. The few times Luna joined their table at dinner, she was met by people rolling their eyes or giving sarcastic comments to some of the things she said or did. The few times Mae had spotted Luna with her Gryffindor friends, no one seemed to be exasperated with her.

Steering her thoughts back to the possibility of Luna referring to Harry Potter made Mae grimace. She was reminded of that one time she had actually seen Harry Potter with her own two eyes — the boy had been laughing with the people sitting around him at dinner, Luna included. He had practically been glowing like some kind of beacon of charisma, looking as well-liked and popular as Zaïf had explained to Mae that he was. The memory only seemed to further her despair — help or not, she didn't want to invite a larger audience to her predicament. Certainly not an audience that people spoke of as if he was some sort of mythical, ancient hero and who probably wouldn't want to be bothered with a strange girl in a curious predicament in the middle of Hallowe'en celebrations.

Also, she really didn't want any heroes seeing her flat on her back with her foot stuck in a magical staircase. Couldn't I have been knocked out cold? She thought pitifully, letting the back of her head fall back onto the stone step she was lying on.

It was eerily quiet around her. Not even the paintings made any noise, all subjects seemingly having moved towards the Great Hall's festivities, where the Hallowe'en feast was sure to be in full swing. A fleeting thought aimed at wondering if Zaïf, Sebastian or even Rai had noticed her absence yet flew through her head. As quick as the thought came, another invaded. An exceptionally depressing one, reminding her of what had happened a mere ten minutes ago.

"There's nothing to talk about."

Nothing made Mae feel as small as a situation she had no control over. Whether it was being punished by Sister Ruth for exhibiting 'abnormal behaviour' (which, in retrospect, was Mae simply exhibiting magic) or having her first friend drop her like yesterday's Daily Prophet. She had not been sure what the outcome of confessing to Sebastian about her awful snooping would be — something awful, sure — but the thought of him ending their short friendship had not even crossed her mind. That's not to say she found it too surprising. Of course not. It was just that it had been such an awful eventuality that she had not wanted to even consider it a possibility.

Then again, he had not come out and specifically said: "I officially end this friendship, from now on to eternity." Yet, the hurt look underneath his cold eyes and the finality of his last words to her somehow felt official enough. She felt that she knew Sebastian well after two months of seeing and talking to him every day — leading her her to know that he did have a rather black or white perspective on things. Either he liked something or someone, or he did not. It was one of the things Mae suspected was why he did not have a broader social circle, even though he could have.

With Zaïf it was more that she was familiar with a lot of other students — of course, most were some distant or not-so distant relative — and due to her need of being around people she didn't share blood with somehow, she had stuck by Mae. (It did help that they had become sincere, bosom friends, of course.) So, in that regard, Zaïf, too, could have had a larger social circle but chose not to. Sebastian, on the other hand, did not have the same reasoning behind who he decided to be around. He wasn't familiar with other students the way the Kandemirs were, but rather he was known. Borderline popular. His name, his surname, was certainly the reason why. Which seemed to make him uncomfortable, judging from the way he isolated himself from whoever would greet him with a grinned '"Oi! Ollivander! How's it going, mate?" He absolutely loathed people who knew him as Ollivander, rather than Sebastian. The glares he offered those people were downright frightening. So whereas both Zaïf and Sebastian shared the same opportunities to expand their number of friends, neither did but due to vastly different reasons.

The reason she reckoned Sebastian had stuck around her was because she had spent an entire train ride knowing him simply as Sebastian; knowing him only as whatever he allowed himself to share with her. Now, though? Now that she had confessed to having tried to seek knowledge about him, about his family — about Ollivander — without him being able to control the narrative? Mae hated his reaction, but certainly understood it. She couldn't fault him, even though she more than anything wanted him to change his mind. Her first friend and—

"Oh, good. You're still here."

The sound of Luna's relieved voice cut through Mae's depressed mind. Turning her head to look down, the sight of two slightly out of breath Hogwarts students made her stomach twist. Despite having managed to garner a small hope of 'The Helping Harry' being anyone other than the one ascending the stairs just then, Mae was mortified to find The Boy Who Lived being dragged by the arm by a cheerful Luna. Could this day get any worse than this?

"Look, Harry! Just like you last year," Luna said happily, pointing needlessly to Mae. "It's even the same step, isn't it?"

"Merlin, are you alright?"

Fourth year, Gryffindor student Harry Potter seemed uninterested in whether or not the step was the same one from last year. In fact, Mae would have immediately wrote him off as utterly uninterested with the situation at hand had it not been for the spark of true concern behind his green eyes. The older boy was looking at her with a frown that seemed far too human to correlate with the way she had heard others speak of him. Above all, though, he looked tired and Mae didn't know what to make of that.

Zaïf had spent the whole first week at Hogwarts on "Potter Watch", trying valiantly to catch a glimpse of him. When, by Wednesday that week, they saw him in the Great Hall the entire thing peaked for the duration of dinner. After that, however, the enthusiasm began to die down and the interest in the famous Gryffindor with it. At the time — those first days — Mae had been swept up by her new friend's excitement, only feeling slightly awkward about the ordeal whenever Sebastian would roll his eyes. Usually that occurred whenever Zaïf got up on her seat, trying to look over the heads in the Great Hall in search of Potter. It had been a strangely fun thing to be a part of. At a distance.

Seeing the famous boy up close, however, felt as strange as it did anti-climatic. Perhaps it was because she hadn't grown up reading about him in Witch Weekly or, even, put a lot of effort in reading about the Fall of the Dark Lord after being introduced to magic. She just did not have the time to catch up in that area — and she really was satisfied by Sebastian's explanation on the train and the odd comment from Zaïf here and there. She was entirely too busy trying to catch up on the fundamentals of the Wizarding World that they were introducing in class, to have time for brushing up on her recent wizarding history. She hadn't the energy to go read up on the First Wizarding War when professor Binns were droning on about the first Goblin War.

With Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood staring at her, Mae tried to find her tongue.

"I'm, erm," she said a bit monotonous from the shock. "Stuck."

As with Luna earlier, she only seemed able to make literal, unhelpful statements. Luna looked delighted at the repeated statement, giving her friend Harry a look of encouragement. Harry's reaction to that was to kneel down next to Mae, tilting his head slightly as he observed where she was stuck.

"That looks painful. And swollen. I think it might be either strained or even fractured," said Harry with a slight frown between his eyes. "How much pain are you in right now?"

The way her eyes widened at both his surprisingly confident assessment of her ankle, as well as his question, was met with a wry smile. It didn't quite meet his eyes, though.

"My mum works at St. Mungo's and I've played quidditch since I was five. You tend to get an eye for these sorts of things."

Nodding, Mae glanced away from him to look down at her foot. She didn't like eye contact with people she didn't know. Sometimes not even people she did know. "Er, it hurts a bit, yeah."

"It's funny," Luna mused suddenly, reminding them of her presence. "So many Nargles get stuck there every day but they're never actually hurt. Just annoyed. I suppose it's because they're so much smaller than we are."

"Er, is it okay if I-" Harry waved his hand towards her foot, ignoring Luna's Nargle-theorizing. As if unsure if Mae understood him fully, he also gave a nod toward her foot, in a surprisingly awkward sort of way. She gave him a hesitant shrug and nod. "Right. Good, okay."

Another sharp gasp of pain escaped her when cold hands wrapped around her ankle and, despite being deliberately gentle, tried to wiggle it to see how stuck it was. The Gryffindor boy mumbled a quick 'sorry', whilst Luna continued to talk about Nargles.

"Should we get a teacher?" Mae asked finally, her shoulder blades tense and aching from being in an uncomfortable position — she was still on her back, prompting herself up on her forearms. "What if the- if the step moves again? Won't my f-foot be crushed?"

"Oh, how dreadfully vile that would be!"

"I can get you out, but-" Harry quickly assured, leaning back on his heels as he frowned at her ankle as if it was something awfully offensive. "It's going to be painful. I could go get a teacher, but the result will be the same. Flitwick helped me when I was stuck, so it'd just be the same spell, but with a teacher."

Mae had half a mind to ask for them to fetch Flitwick, simply because she would feel better about having a grown up performing spells on her. Moreso; someone she actually knew and trusted.

Still, she muttered, "No, that's alright. You can do it. If- if you know how."

"Alright," Harry muttered himself, sounding equally excited about it. Not necessarily due to a lack of confidence in his abilities, Mae didn't think, but rather because he was reluctant to do it for some other reason. Maybe he didn't want to hurt her. "Luna, why don't you hold her hand?"

"Certainly," Luna agreed without hesitation and, without Mae having had a chance to offer her hand, grabbed a tight hold of it. "Deep breaths, Mae Lind."

The situation was absurd. She was surrounded by two strange people, in a magical castle, stuck in a magically shifting staircase, and some sort of important figure in Wizarding history was about to perform some obscure Get-Unstuck-spell on her. She had believed herself dreaming for less.

"Okay, alright," Harry muttered again and had taken out his wand from inside his robes. "Again, this'll hurt. So, just… er, relax."

Mae nodded mutely, watching him with worried eyes. He avoided looking at her face as he, with a very concentrated look on his pale face, said an incantation she didn't quite catch. It didn't matter, though, because she had no time to focus on something so trivial when her entire foot was on fire.

"Sorry," Harry said sharply, an edge to his voice as he quickly grabbed her shin and dragged her foot out from under the now lifted step.

At the relief of no longer being constricted, her ankle had instead turned ice cold at the same time it turned burning hot. That caused her to reluctantly let out a sound of pain and brought tears to her eyes.

"That looks bad," Luna said from somewhere above and behind Mae.

"Luna," Harry chided quietly, but there was some sympathetic agreement in his voice as he grimaced at the swollen ankle that had turned a nasty shade of purple. "You should- we should probably head to the Hospital Wing."

"Hospital?" Mae squeaked anxiously, momentarily more afraid of the idea of a hospital than the pain in her foot. "No, I don't want to go to a hospital, please, I-"

"The wing, the hospital wing. You need to have Madam Pomfrey fix that up for you," Harry cut in hurriedly as he and Luna grabbed an arm each of Mae's and began to help her off the ground. "It'll take a minute, I swear. She's brilliant, she'll have that fixed in a blink."

A vague memory of professor Flitwick discussing the hospital wing amongst other facilities at Hogwarts tickled the back of her mind, calming her a tad. The mere thought of going to a hospital made her short of breath, remembering the last time she had visited one.

Luna and Harry wrapped her arms around them so that she practically hung off them by holding their necks (they were both considerably taller than her) whilst they both tried to keep her steady on her feet with an arm around her back. She felt like crying when they began to ascend the stairs, making it clear that the hospital wing was not going to just magically appear in front of her.

"You're very short," Luna panted beside her, awkwardly trying to walk while hunched down to meet Mae halfway. Harry was doing the same, and being taller than Luna, he looked even more awkward. "And little."

"I'm a first year," Mae shakily defended herself. She wasn't little.

"I suppose. You're smaller than most eleven year olds, though. Isn't she, Harry?"

Harry hummed non-committedly. If she wasn't so close to tears and busy feeling sorry for herself, Mae would've been completely horrified at how not in the mood Harry Potter seemed to be. He had not stopped frowning since he arrived and he looked rather bothered. Whether it was of Mae, or something else, remained unclear.

It took them ten minutes to get to the hospital wing where a uniformed woman took one look at Mae and then demanded to know what had happened. Luna made a longer affair than necessary of explaining what happened — she included Nargles and radishes — whilst Harry Potter stood silently on the side, glancing at the clock. Madam Pomfrey looked deeply displeased to hear Luna explain that she had crashed into Mae due to being distracted. After a quick affair of scolding the third year Ravenclaw, Madam Pomfrey wanted both Luna and Harry out.

"Feel better, Mae Lind," Luna said, seemingly not at all affected by the scolding she had received. Mae, who hadn't even been on the receiving end, had broken out in a cold sweat. "I'm sorry you're missing the feast."

"Thanks," Mae mumbled, avoiding eye contact with the older students.

"Er, yeah, feel better," Harry added, scratching the back of his head as he did.

"Thank you. And, erm, thanks for helping me… with, erm…"

"Don't mention it," Harry cut her off and, for the first time since showing up with Luna, he gave her a smile. A real one, that cut through some of the gloominess he had been carrying around. "Term hasn't truly started until someone's been stuck in that bloody step."

Mae managed, with red cheeks, a pursed smile and nod before giving the two friends a wave goodbye. She watched them leave, feeling quite relieved to be rid of them. Not because she didn't like them — they'd been nice to her, sans Luna (accidentally) pushing her down the stairs — but because she didn't do well with people. She just wished they wouldn't tell the whole school about her incident; them knowing was embarrassing enough. Oh, and Madam Pomfrey.

"If I've told him once, I've told him a million times about that step," the healer scoffed after having forced Mae to swallow some potion that was supposed to ease the pain. It worked like magic. "But no, he's far too busy policing the corridors as if we've got escaped prisoners on the loose. Ridiculous man."

Mae didn't know nor did she ask whom Madam Pomfrey was talking about, but when she later spent a few minutes ranting about "him and that blasted cat', she thought she could wager a pretty good guess at who the healer was referring to.

"Will I- is it broken, ma'am?" she asked, watching Madam Pomfrey examine her ankle. An ankle that felt comfortably numb, after the potion.

"Broken? No. It's fractured," came the abrupt reply. "I can fix it via potion or spell — which would you prefer, Miss Lind?"

"Er," she was still so unused to being given alternatives; to being asked for her opinion. At St. Jude's things happened to her, they were never mutually agreed upon. "Which would you recommend, ma'am?"

"Either is equally successful. The potion is slower to work and I'd have to keep you overnight, but where the spell is quicker, it's also a lot more uncomfortable healing-wise. It will hurt."

As welcoming and different as Hogwarts' hospital wing and medical staff were, years of enduring St. Jude's abysmal treatment of her in all areas, including medically, made her eager to get back to her dormitory. Away from people.

"Then I'd like the spell, please, ma'am," Mae said and Madam Pomfrey nodded. Then, as if unable to stop herself, the healer gave her a funny look.

"You're a very polite young girl, Miss Lind."

Completely blindsided by the compliment, Mae gave Madam Pomfrey a blank look before blushing furiously. "Er, thank you, ma'am."

Madam Pomfrey simply hummed as she propped Mae's leg up on a couple of pillows. An hour later and Mae was back in her dormitory, crawling into bed like a soldier coming home from war. Exhausted both physically and mentally, she drifted off into a heavy sleep with an empty stomach and a restless mind.

What. A. Day.

* * *

It was the most dreaded day of the year, followed closely by her birthday. Eleven years on and neither Lily nor James knew how to properly handle the 31st of October. The pain had not ever lessened or dulled — it had become sharper. Heavier. And this year seemed worse than any year before it. Then again, it always seemed that way.

"I looked for her."

James quiet admission had the effect of a shout, startling Lily to curl up tighter against his chest. They were in bed, trying to sleep even though they both knew they wouldn't. They never did.

"What do you mean?" Lily asked softly, knowing who he spoke of, just not in what context.

"At the platform this year. I looked for her."

Lily closed her eyes tightly, her throat closing up. This year would have been Grace's Hogwarts debut and hell, if she would not have done just about anything to shed tears over a temporary goodbye at the train station, instead of — over a decade later — still cry over the permanent goodbye neither of them had got to prepare for.

"Harry wrote this morning," Lily said, tightening her hold around James' middle. "He wants to come home this weekend."

James nodded, inhaling deeply as he stared up at the ceiling unseeingly. Whenever October came knocking, he would descend into a state of absolute exhaustion. It had been more manageable when Harry was younger, before he went off to Hogwarts. With Harry away he had no one to to focus all of his attention on, and his job and Lily weren't enough distraction. After Harry's eleventh birthday he found himself suddenly and wholly unprepared to deal with the thoughts that would cloud him come October; what would she look like? Would she have been like Harry, or Harry's complete opposite? Like him or like Lily?

What colour would her eyes have been?

Strangely, that one always got to him. It was the question that haunted him the most and could lure him down the rabbit hole the fastest. It was the question that could cause him to turn up to work with bags under his hazel eyes or, sometimes, cause him to not turn up at all. No one ever challenged him about his absence when that happened. They knew, as did the whole wizarding world, what had happened to them. As a result of that, people had no qualms whatsoever about looking the other way whenever the Potter family was reminded of their sacrifices.

As little as James cared for physical appearance, he had still developed an intense hang-up on the colour of his daughter's eyes. Like any parent who had read every book under the sun on babies and parenthood, James had once stumbled across a trivial fact about a baby's changing eye colour. He remembered Grace's eyes to have been a deep and dark shade of blue at eleven weeks and two days old (that would put her at about two months and just over two weeks old.) According to muggles and wizards alike, a baby's eye colour was determined between three and six months old — that is to say, a child born with blue eyes could later have them turn green or brown. Harry's had turned green after almost six months.

As inconsequential as the concept of eye colour was in the scheme of things, it still felt suffocatingly cruel to James that he didn't know. Not knowing his daughter's true eye colour bothered him to the point of panic attacks. It wasn't rational or even irrational — it just was.

Lily had the same problem with not being able to give a concrete answer to the question: "What did Grace like?" For Grace hadn't been old enough for such ideas to really mean anything.

Sure, there were things that they knew about Grace which were intimate and only theirs to know. For example, she would — without fail — fall asleep whenever James walked around with her against his chest, She had been a very small baby, smaller than Harry had been, due to being a month early; and, she had been one of those rare babies that slept through the night without much fuss. Those weren't facts that truly made a person, however, and Lily yearned for the answers to questions she would never get to ask. Would she have been a night owl or a morning person? Would she have thought her mum and dad funny or just embarrassing? What animal would she favour? Lily and James, Harry too, never had the chance to actually know Grace. It was one of the many losses they had to live with. Death was not simply physical and certainly never over.

Whenever Lily saw a child point hopefully at a sweet they wanted in the supermarket, or argue with their parent about something trivial, she found herself breathless with pain. Early on, after Voldemort's fall, Lily had been forced to switch to geriatrics at St. Mungo's. After weeks upon weeks of being triggered by healing children with parents holding their hands and kissing their foreheads, it became blatantly clear that she had to change her scenery. It worked, mostly.

Lots of things changed when Voldemort killed the Evanses and Grace. Not only was the world three wonderful people short, but Harry was physically and mentally traumatized from having survived the Killing Curse, and Lily and James walked around more lacking in themselves than ever before. Not to mention that everyone who knew them were forced to accept that the Potters they had once known were no longer around.

Neither were Sirius and Remus, who had changed from the losses as well.

Remus began to visit more. Pushing through his own insecurities about being a bother in order to make sure that the Potters were alright. He grew very close with Harry during that time, due to the hours he spent looking after the young boy when Lily and James needed time to grieve. They all agreed early on that Harry should be protected from seeing his parents cry as much as was possible, not wanting to scare the already scared boy. Remus spent hours upon hours with Harry, infinitely patient with the boy who had become almost mute after surviving not only his own death, but his sister's and grandparents', too. Despite believing himself to be less of a person than his friends, Remus did appreciate that he had played a huge role in successfully working through Harry's trauma in those years. By the age of six, Harry was talking again and had gone back to being almost as outgoing as he had been before Voldemort's fall. Not quite the same, but nearly.

Godfather Sirius Black had changed as well — unfortunately, not in the positive way Remus had. No, Sirius went in the opposite direction. He went away shortly after the funerals, manically hunting down the remaining Death Eaters as he stayed away from the Potters. Racked with guilt that no one but himself put on him, Sirius spent years keeping away from the family he believed himself to have destroyed. With Peter still at large, there was no one else to immediately blame for the rat's betrayal other than himself. Again, something only he did. It had been the pleading letter from a seven year old Harry, asking him why he wasn't coming to his birthday party, that finally made the disgraced Black rethink his distance. Later than any of them would have preferred, he came back. Changed, but still Sirius.

Everyone had and still were grieving in different ways, for different things, and for different reasons. What they had done, together, was move forward. It was why, so many years later, they were still together and as close as ever. Remus and Sirius came over at least once a week and worked diligently to maintain the bond that had survived for so long. They celebrated everything together and grieved everything together.

Except for October 31st.

That day was always spent away from each other. Only Lily, James and Harry were together for that one, unless Harry was at school — as he was this year. It had never been expressly decided that they weren't to come together at Hallowe'en, it just naturally came about from a place of silent understanding. There was nothing, not even each other, which could make the day easier and so they all dealt with it separately. All of them felt such an immense guilt, a guilt that would never leave them, and which caused them all to internally implode on the day.

What if they had stayed home? What if Sirius had never switched places with Peter? What if Remus had taken the red flags more seriously? What if they had somehow managed to take Voldemort down earlier? Grief brought as much pain as it did irrationality.

"Remus is coming home on Friday," James muttered in an attempt to force himself to be present and grounded in the now and not the past. "He's finished everything with Scamander."

"We'll invite him over, Sirius too. Have a dinner with them and Harry."

James hummed at Lily's soft but distant voice. As boundless as the pain was, he was hyper aware of the fact that he never would have survived this long without Lily by his side.

And, vice versa.


	7. Chapter 6

"On a sheer peak of joy we meet;

Below us hums the abyss;

Death either way allures our feet

If we take one step amiss.

One moment let us drink the blue

Transcendent air together—

Then down where the same old work's to do

In the same dull daily weather.

We may not wait . . . yet look below!

How part? On this keen ridge

But one may pass. They call you—go!

My life shall be your bridge."

**— ****Edith Wharton,**** '****_A Meeting'_**

Chapter Six: _Rumour has it_

"_**MAE!**_"

The distressed shout — nay, wail — brought Mae out of her slumber the way a sledgehammer would. Heart jump-starting along with her consciousness, she barely had enough time to open her eyes before someone was on top of her back, either trying to suffocate her or hug her. Despite the lack of air, she suspected the former. Zaïf had never shown any murderous tendencies, but she was prone to hugs.

"Wha's goin' on?" Asked Mae in a drowsy voice that matched her drowsy eyes, craning her neck to catch a glimpse of her friend.

The light coming from the lit candles around their dormitory illuminated her bed quarters. Zaïf had ripped her bed curtains wide open, making it possible for Mae to make out the upset expression on Zaïf's face, despite not having her glasses on.

"What _happened_? Lovegood said you fell down the stairs, Mae! And you didn't come to dinner, and- and when we got to the hospital wing you weren't there and-"

Awkwardly turning around to lie on her back, Mae managed to get Zaïf to ease off on the whole lying-on-top-of-her. Fumbling for her glasses, she put them on and got perfect vision of her friend looking close to tears. _Uh-oh_.

"Mae, what _happened_?" Zaïf repeated, out of breath and with a desperation so unlike the recklessly fun-loving girl.

"I-" Her brain had yet caught up to the state of being awake so it took a few moments to gather herself enough to answer. "Well, I mean, yes, I did fall down the stairs, but I'm alright, I promise. Madam Pomfrey fixed me right up."

Despite what Mae thought was reassurance, Zaïf looked anything but reassured. Desperate worry still danced behind the girl's dark eyes and there was a furrow between her brows which did not look like it was taking leave anytime soon.

"I was worried sick. I'd no idea where you were and when Lovegood—" Zaïf inhaled deeply as if mighty disturbed. "—_Merlin_, when Lovegood told us you'd fallen down the stairs my heart dropped down to my toes. Honest to Seimei, I thought I'd vom all over Sebby, Mae" Zaïf stressed, clutching the blankets with white knuckles. "Tell me everything. Wait, no! Are you sure you're alright? What happened? Did you break anything?"

At the Zaïf's third insistence on being told what had happened, Mae managed to straighten up into a sitting position and — from the top — tell her everything. Well, almost everything. She left out her falling out with Sebastian simply because she felt overly sensitive in involving anyone else in something that was supposed to be between just the two of them. If she had to take a wild guess, Sebastian wouldn't be keen on her telling others their business, without his permission. Sort of like how he had not been keen on Mae asking other's about his business, without his permission.

"Man, that's mental," Zaïf breathed, looking about as shocked as Mae felt about the ordeal. "Good thing that fourth year knew the right spell. I'm guessing you would've hated having a teacher there, witnessing you all stuck and late for the feast."

Alright — so she had not told Zaïf exactly everything. Solely due to something in her gut telling her to, she had refrained from telling Zaïf about Luna Lovegood's involvement of Harry Potter. It was not anything personal against Zaïf, she just felt… awkward about mentioning the Gryffindor's presence. Besides, it was not relevant _who_ had helped her, and since Zaïf had not asked for a name, Mae didn't feel too bad about not providing one.

"I'm just glad it was sorted so quickly," Mae muttered, pulling the comforter closer to her shoulders. Zaïf was once again lying on her, but this time she was draped over Mae's legs rather than back. "And, erm, sorry. You know, for not letting you know what happened. I just- I was so tired, I didn't stop to think about finding you to explain what happened."

Which was not true at all. She had in fact not even considered that Zaïf might have wanted to know about her incident — she wasn't familiar with having people caring about her, and therefore didn't know what was expected of her. Keeping friends in the loop was as new a concept as magic was. It would take some getting used to it all.

"Ah, don't worry about it," Zaïf dismissed with a shrug. "Next time don't head to bed without letting me know where you are, though. Seb and I nearly didn't make it up to the hospital wing; we were so out of breath from literally racing up all the stairs."

She couldn't help but wince at Zaïf's casual mention of Sebastian.

"Sebastian? He was with you?"

"Of course," Zaïf rolled her eyes. "Merlin, you should've seen him. He told me not to worry when you didn't show up at first, saying you were just taking your time coming down. Then, when Lovegood showed up talking about you and the hospital wing he suddenly didn't find me to be overreacting after all."

"Huh, well..." Mae mumbled lamely. She didn't know how to react because she didn't know what it meant, Sebastian having looked for her. She knew what she _wanted _it to mean, but she was not one to trust her own wishful thinking.

"Oh, no!" Zaïf suddenly exclaimed, jumping from the bed as if it had caught on fire. "I was supposed to let him know if I found you, he'll be absolutely fuming mad—"

Mae watched her race out of their dormitory with an impressive speed, nearly ripping the door off its hinges with how violently she slammed it open. It left behind a quiet dormitory and a reluctantly contemplating Mae. She was trying to distract herself from analysing Sebastian and whatever he thought of her — _do you look for someone if you don't consider them a friend anymore?_ She curiously glanced at her bedside table which adorned a clock. It was just after seven, meaning she had slept for just about forty minutes since arriving back from Madam Pomfrey. Almost an hour since falling (depending who you asked: was pushed) down the stairs.

Yet, it felt like it had been hours. She reckoned she could go down to dinner if she really wanted to and join the festivities, but judging from the sluggish state her mind and body were in, she felt it best to instead eat a large breakfast. It was not, and certainly would not be, the last time she missed an important meal. It was, on the other hand, the first time she missed it by her own hand.

A familiar coo interrupted the silence, followed by Edur flying gracefully into the dormitory through the open window. (The windows were always open at Hogwarts, for there were no glass. However, the outside temperature or weather never made its way indoors.) Carrying in his beak was a letter with the Hogwarts insignia on it, and immediately Mae's heart skipped a beat. Whether it was for the novelty of correspondence, or the obvious officiality of the envelope, she couldn't tell. She waited for Edur — who had grown into himself a little after weeks at Hogwarts — to perch himself on her shoulder where he, when settled, dropped the letter in her lap.

"Thank you," she made sure to say, distractedly stroking the top of his head.

Making a quick affair of opening it, Mae clumsily unfolded the letter and scanned the short text written in a beautiful cursive.

_Miss Lind,_

_Madam Pomfrey has informed me of your accident this evening. I am glad to hear that you are all right and that there will not be any lasting worries. You may find me in my office or send me an owl, if need be. I have asked the kitchens to bring you supper, as I suspect you will want to rest in the privacy of your dormitory. _

_Rest up and feel better!_

_Sincerely,_

_Filius Flitwick_

_Head of Ravenclaw House_

Mae had no time to try to think about the logistics of someone bringing her supper when, within a moment of having finished reading, there was a loud pop. Standing just next to her bed with a plate that looked to be steaming hot, was someone unlike anyone else she had ever seen.

"Sir professor Flitwick has asked Dobby to bring Miss dinner!"

The voice was as squeaky as Mae had imagined it would be. Somehow the doe-like, enormous eyes that shone with an unfiltered brightness did not belong to someone she would have thought spoke with a deep timbre. In fact, nothing about Dobby looked like it could ever be classified as dark. "Will Miss enjoy this or shall Dobby bring Miss something more to Miss' liking?"

Trying to swallow her shock, Mae glanced at the offered plate and quickly scanned its contents. She knew that if this Dobby person had brought a plate full of pine cones, she still would have said:

"That looks lovely, Sir, thank you."

Taking the plate from Dobby, Mae's stomach turned to ice when she glanced to see him regard her with wide (well, wid_er_) eyes and an open mouth. Had one or more of the six words she used insulted Dobby? Was it the 'Sir'?" Dread washed over her, thinking she had somehow misgendered the generous Dobby — a dread that washed away when a bright, beaming smile was directed at her.

"Oh, Miss is very kind to call Dobby 'Sir'," he told her, the delight blatantly clear. "Dobby must usually insist upon it."

She didn't know how to respond to that so she simply gave him a meek but sincere smile, still reeling from the previous anxiety.

"Is Miss feeling alright this evening? Sir professor Flitwick told Dobby the Miss was ill and could not attend the feast."

Opening her mouth to reply, she was stunned silent by Dobby suddenly slapping his head violently. Repeatedly.

"_No questions! No questions! Dobby asks to many questions!" _

"Hey, no, wait! Stop it!" Mae nearly dropped the plate she had just been given, hurriedly leaving her bed to somehow hinder Dobby's self-inflicted abuse. "Stop it, please, stop, Mr. Dobby!"

Grabbing a hold of Dobby's thin wrists, she forced them away from his head and brought them down to his sides. Thankfully, his screeching about asking too many questions had stopped, but he was still looking quite distressed. And dazed, as if coming out of a trance.

"Dobby is sorry. Dobby still is not used to being free, Miss," he told her unsteadily and Mae was more confused than placated by that explanation.

"Don't apologize," she mumbled, hesitantly releasing him. "Just- er, don't hurt yourself, okay? I didn't think you were asking too many questions, Sir. You can ask how many you'd like, I really don't mind."

"Miss is too kind," Dobby said miserably, hanging his head. "Dobby is sorry for the fright."

Absolutely and utterly confused by the whole interaction, Mae slowly shook her head in dismissal of his second offered apology. "It's alright, I promi- "

She was cut off by the re-entrance of a giddy-looking Zaïf.

"Alright then! Do you feel up to heading back down to- Oh, erm, hello."

Zaïf stopped dead in her tracks, eyes on Dobby. He stared back at her just as startled and, backing away from Mae's bed, hurriedly bowed his head once more.

"Dobby shall leave the Misses to their evening! Happy Hallow's Eve, Misses!"

With the same pop he arrived with, he left. Disappearing from thin air and leaving behind a stunned Mae in his wake. _What on earth…?_

"What did the House elf want? Oh, is that food?" Zaïf, ever the fan of distractions, walked over to sit down next to Mae on the bed, eyeing the plate now in Mae's lap with appreciation. "That's proper service, that is. Our House elf, Mayoush, would rather free herself than bring food to our rooms, no matter the situation. My gram's never allowed food outside the dining area and-"

Used to the tangents Zaïf would embark on, Mae had grown comfortable with cutting her off in order to steer the conversation back on track. It had taken her two months, but still. Progress was progress, no matter how slow or minimal.

"What's a House elf?"

"What's a- Oh, I forget you're a muggleborn sometimes. Well, er, a House elf's like a servant, right? Most wizarding families have them because they're inherited. Or, I suppose, not _most _wizarding families have them," Zaïf frowned and Mae snuck in time to break off the piece of loaf that had accompanied the meatloaf, potatoes, beets and peas. Silently offering the other half of the bread, Zaïf distractedly accepted it as she continued to try to explain. "Usually only the old ones. Everyone in my family has one, except cousin Eira. She married a muggleborn and he didn't have one growing up so he didn't bring one, nor was he very keen on the one Eira was offered. Is it weird? To have one? I've never thought about it before."

"Having a House elf?" Mae tried to clarify. "Erm. I don't know. What exactly is it that they… do?"

"House work, mostly. Cooking, cleaning, be at hand."

"I suppose we- I mean, muggles have housekeepers."

"Housekeepers? What's that?"

The evening was turning stranger and stranger. Mae took a large gulp of pumpkin juice, feeling a bit winded by how fast and how much she was stuffing her face. Apparently, she had been starving.

"Someone paid to clean your house. But only rich people can afford to hire someone, it's not at all common. At least, I don't think."

"Someone, as in a _person_? Like a muggle?" Zaïf looked shocked to her bone. Mae nodded. "That's insane. At least they're paid for it, then?"

"I've never met a House elf before," Mae said, trying to circle back to Dobby who had — as much as he had confused her — fascinated her. "He was very… nice. But he started hitting himself and he- well, you heard him, he spoke in third person. Is that normal?"

"Hitting themselves?" Zaïf looked decidedly uncomfortable. "Only really… dedicated House elves punish themselves like that. Mum says you can really tell a family by its elf. And the whole third person thing is just how they speak."

"Dedicated? What does that mean exactly?"

"House elves who'd rather chop their heads off than upset their master. Some owners treat their elves really badly and have them punish themselves when they step out of line. I heard that there's some purebloods who force their elves to, like, cut their limbs off if they misbehave or forget to dust the chandelier or whatever."

Suddenly, the delicious food Dobby had brought became less appetizing. Putting the half-finished plate on the nightstand, Mae gave Zaïf a deeply uncomfortable frown.

"Do- Does Dobby work here? Does Hogwarts… do things the pureblood way?"

"Merlin, no! Dumbledore's not like that, he wouldn't allow it," Zaïf said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "No, I imagine the House elves at Hogwarts are treated better than just about anywhere else. I wouldn't be surprised if he pays them, honestly."

"They're not usually paid?" Mae's cry of shock was met by a nervous look from Zaïf. It was perhaps the most notable exchange between the two girls that displayed the different types of lives they had lived. "How do they afford to- to live?"

"Sebastian!" Zaïf decided to exclaim instead, realizing that there had been a reason she had missed Mae's interaction with the House elf. A reason she felt much more inclined to move on to, conversation-wise, than continuing what she was finding to be a very uncomfortable topic. "I told him you're alright, that I found you. He sort of figured that, though, when I didn't immediately come back down. Do you want to go down and finish the feast with us?"

Mae was not entirely happy about the change of subject. Mostly due to having more questions about the House elves but, also, because she did not want to be thinking about Sebastian. Between finding out yet another appalling, bigoted view held by wizard society, falling down stairs and getting in a fight with Sebastian? Mae felt herself warming up to the idea of simply just heading back to St. Jude's. At least there she felt like she had knowledge and a certain understanding of how things worked enough to be able to expect the bad things, meanwhile Hogwarts was a maze she was trying to navigate whilst blindfolded. The new lack of control of her surroundings was disconcerting.

"I think Sebastian's in a bad mood, by the way."

The speed of which her stomach dropped at Zaïf's casual observation was impressive. Trying to appear no more than curious, she raised an eyebrow whilst slipping under the covers. Zaïf shifted slightly so that Mae could draw the comforter up to her shoulders.

"Yeah, he came down to dinner looking about as happy as the Bulgarians did after the cup and was so snappy with me when I asked if he'd seen you. I wonder if that letter he got at lunch was from his mum or something."

Mae was tense and deliberately staying silent, not wanting to encourage Zaïf to say anything else about Sebastian and his family. However, she also didn't want to ask Zaïf to stop talking, afraid it would seem suspicious and open the door that could lead to having to explain that she actually knew exactly why Sebastian had come down to dinner in a foul mood.

"I heard from Rai that everyone's going absolutely batshit back at the Black residence," Zaïf chuckled. Mae was gingerly moving over to lie on her side and pressing her left cheek into her pillow, trying to move around as much as possible as if to drown Zaïf's chatter. "Did you know he's only like the third one from the Black side of the family who've not been sorted into Slytherin? Apparently-"

"I'm sorry Zaïf," she cut off, trying to smile apologetically but it looked more like a pained grimace. "But I'm still a bit shaken from tonight, and I— I'm having a hard time trying to keep my eyes open, honestly."

Zaïf's eyes widened and she nearly fell on her bum trying to get off Mae's bed. "I'm such a bad friend, holy bezoar. Mae, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to keep you—"

"No, don't worry about it!"

"— up. Of course your need rest. I swear, it's like I've got some kind of illness. My mouth just won't stop," Zaif groaned, looking a bit flushed, clearly embarrassed. "You're literally in bed, trying to recuperate and I've been talking your ears off."

"Zaïf I really don't mind," Mae insisted firmly, frowning at friend's discomfort. "Don't feel bad. I've told you I like that you like to talk. And I do want to continue talking, just not when I might fall asleep and have you think you've bored me."

Zaïf, outgoing and downright carefree in a wonderfully exuberant way, looked strange when self-conscious. Having such a big personality and seeing her shrink into herself was something Mae could do without — if only because she was finding herself becoming bolder and more confident with Zaïf around. Almost as if the girl was contagious.

"You have to tell me when I talk too much, when it starts to annoy you," Zaïf insisted. "I won't be mad — I'll be more mad if you stop hanging out with me because I can't shut up."

"I'll tell you if that happens. Which I don't think it will."

"Good," Zaïf breathed a sigh of relief, her frown turning into a smile. "Now, alright. Go to sleep so you're all better tomorrow. If I have to sit alone with Sebastian and Rai at Charms I'll ask Flitwick to _Wingardium_ _Leviosa _me out the window."

With the reminder of their seating arrangements (Mae seated next to Sebastian in almost every class,) Zaïf pulled the curtains of Mae's bed shut and left her wallowing in dread.

* * *

"Where did you run off to? That was the vaguest Luna's ever been," Ron said when Harry returned to the Gryffindor table. "It's probably not in your best interest to respond to every: 'Come quick, I need your help.'"

"Excuse you," Ginny quipped from next to Hermione, pointing a chicken leg at her brother. with a pointed eyebrow. "Her exact words were: '_Me and a friend of mine is in need of assistance, Harry. Please follow.' _Which, is arguably vaguer."

"What happened, Harry?" Hermione asked, the only one focused enough not to take the mickey out of yet another bizarre Luna-interaction.

"A first year got stuck between that blasted step that got me last year," he explained with a note of tiredness that did not go unnoticed by his friends. Neither had the sullen mood he had carried all day. "Had to get her out and up to Pomfrey."

"Is she alright?" Ginny asked, a concerned frown on her freckled face.

"Fine," he confirmed with a shrug and reached for his cup. "Fractured her ankle I think, but Pomfrey's got her so she'll be fine."

The conversation — thanks to Hermione — was then steered towards discussing the impracticalities Hogwarts had a tendency to house. Ginny, Ron and Hermione did all the talking, a strategic and unspoken move from them all, knowing Harry had practically checked out. Something he did every Halloween for good reason. Although not sure how to make him feel better, they had at least managed to find a relatively good way to not make him feel _worse_. Just letting him sit quietly, on the outskirt of their chatter and banter, seemed to help him more than the time they had tried to get him to talk to them about it. This way, he wasn't putting up walls or running off on his own to wallow.

Ron and Hermione had the night before, when Harry had gone off to bed early, quietly discussed their strategy for the anniversary. Both knew that this year would be different the minute Harry had spent the majority of the train ride to Hogwarts in silence, looking deep in troubling thought. When Hermione had cautiously asked him what was the matter, he had looked out the window and muttered a short explanation:

"Dad was looking for her in the crowd."

It was rare, the times Harry would discuss his dead little sister. He could mention his grandparents in passing with sentimental reminiscing, but any mention of Grace was reluctant and accompanied by vacant or haunted eyes. The majority of Ron and Hermione's knowledge of Grace Potter had actually come in the form of Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, who had once — when they had been staying at the Potters over the summer — discreetly sat them down in hope of giving Harry two people that could look out for him at school during Halloween. Lily and James surely have done it themselves, but the topic was a tad too sore for them for such a gesture. The Godfathers were hoping that Ron and Hermione could become to Harry what they were to Lily and James. So far, entrusting such intimate knowledge to the two Gryffindors had been the right decision. Understanding the reason behind Harry's sudden and sometimes unexpected malaise had been the first step in working out how to make themselves useful to him. Just being there seemed to go a long way.

"I think I'm going to head to bed," Harry announced, just as the mood of the feast was peaking. He had yet to have cracked a single smile and, really, that was okay.

"I think we'll head up soon, as well," Hermione said, trying to look calm and casual. Harry did not respond well to pity or concern, being a deeply self-reliant and independent person. Leaning on others was not something he did, but rather he wanted others to lean on him.

"We'll be in the common room, absolutely crushing Seamus and Dean in chess if you want to come find us," Ron announced, looking down the table to grin villainous towards the unsuspecting boys. Ron had lost a Exploding Snaps game earlier that week to Dean and was looking to win back his losses tonight.

"Alright, thanks," Harry mumbled, off-handedly despite it coming straight from his heart. He didn't think he would ever be able to express just how grateful he was to have the kind of friends he did. "I'll see you tomorrow, g'night."

"Night, Harry!"

"Goodnight, mate."

They looked after him, unable not to, wishing sleep would find him quick and easy. They just hated to think of him alone, wallowing in dread.


End file.
